The Time of Our Singing

A dazzling, dense, ingeniously constructed and beautifully written novel, The Time of Our Singing is, perhaps, the first truly great novel of the new century. It tells the story of the black Philadelphian Daley family and the marriage of their daughter to a white Jewish emigre in the 1940s and charts the fortunes of their life together, and, most crucially their children. Set against the backdrop of the emerging civil rights movement, it is never judgemental in tone or an overtly political book, but it conveys its message with beauty and subtlety. The prose is quite simply beautiful. Though the text is dense, and the book long, Powers never descends into the sort of vainglorious obscurity of other American novellists, such as Don DeLillo. Everything has a purpose, nothing - in more than 600 pages - is there unnecesserily. I normally guzzle down books in a day or so, but found myself savouring this one, almost hoping that it would never end. Alas, it did, but now at least I can turn my attention to Powers' other works. I can't state my admiration for this book highly enough, but buy it now, and you can tell your grandchildren that you read a classic within a couple of years of its publication. It's that good.

...that is heartbreaking in its beauty and its tragedy. And its hope. I thought for a long time regarding how best to describe this book in one sentence. In this, I felt as if I had been put in the predicament experienced by a New York Times book reviewer who, two decades ago, in describing a favorite work of literature, wrote "...I find myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately describing its brilliance." And, with apologies to another author whose title words I paraphrase above, this is how I choose to describe this powerful new novel. The overarching theme of the story is race, and what it is like to be black in America (even if that "blackness" is barely apparent and issues of class and culture are largely absent). It is the story of three siblings - two brothers of nearly the same age and a younger sister - flung apart repeatedly by the centripetal force of race and its effect on family and career in the latter half of the 20th century, only to be brought back together time and again by the pressure of events, both familial and racial. Powers uses the subthemes of classical music and contemporary physics to compelling effect in weaving together both the narrative of the siblings (and their family) and the greater story of "being black in America." In the process, he cuts across time, flashing backwards and forwards in the narrative while telling both the story of the siblings and the history of race relations from their parents' generation to the near-present. The latter is dealt with in a series of brilliant set pieces covering every race-relations event of significance over this period, from Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial concert of 1939, in defiance of the D.A.R., to the Million Man March more than half-century later; in the process, the story's protagonists appear, "Zelig-like," at the periphery of these events. Told more "linearly" than Powers's style of cutting back and forth in time, the story is about an interracial couple (he, a German Jewish emigre physicist recently escaped from Nazi Germany, she, a talented black singer without opportunity for a professional career due to color) who choose to rear these siblings "colorless" and home-schooled in their formative years (including intensive attention to music and singing). The choice - largely that of the father - can be read as a well-intentioned but ultimately failing effort to increase racial "entropy," a term from physics that Powers doesn't use explicitely but nonetheless seems to suggest. The subtheme of music propels the narrative forward. Jonah - the older son - is destined for great things as a singer; he has a voice of such beauty and purity that one like it comes along, at best, once per generation. Joseph - the younger son (by a year), and the story's narrator - is not the talent that Jonah is, but he is the main support backbone - an "enabler" - for Jonah, as well as his accompanist, over muc

As a fervent classical music-lover and voracious reader, I have read many novels over the years that had music as a background. One immediately thinks of Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music,' which was fine, and a wonderful debut novel, 'Disturbance of the Inner Ear,' by Joyce Hackett.I've just finished one that is head and shoulders above either of those mentioned: 'The Time of Our Singing,' by one of our greatest living novelists (and I don't say that lightly), Richard Powers. I've read all his books ever since my daughter gave me a copy of 'The Gold Bug Variations' (which itself has an awful lot of music in it; and yes, that pun that is more than just a catchy title).The book's theme, if one can say it is just one thing, is what it's like to be of mixed race in America (and in the latter pages, in the Old World). I won't bore you with a plot outline. I will say that there is not a page that doesn't have some reference to music, primarily classical, although there are some pages that refer to gospel songs, popular music, jazz, even smoky bar music. The writer never puts a foot wrong; he obviously is a music-maker himself. There is no other way, I think, he could have written such detailed, emotionally right passages about making music. The only solecism I detected in 600+ pages was a reference, in passing, to Simon Estes as a tenor. As far as I know he has always sung as a bass-baritone.The characters are Powers's most appealing. The plot has more twists than a Rocky Mountain switchback. The prose is poetic in its evocativeness. And we CARE about what happens. I believe that this is Powers's best book - and again I say this as a fervent admirer of his 'Plowing the Dark,' 'The Gold Bug Variations,' and 'Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance,' as well as 'Galatea 2.2.'NOW: Scroll down and read Francis McInerney's customer review. It is brilliant.

It is hard to find a book that expresses the miracle of understanding music as well as this one. To know what it feels like to hear beyond the notes, to innately comprehend he composer's sentiment, is something most people will never realize, and in "The Time of Our Singing," Richard Powers brings most of us mortals about as close as we'll ever get to that sublime experience. His new novel is a big, involving story of music, love, and race, three entrancing elements that lead to a good read.The music element is the most successful in the Strom family saga. German-Jewish physicist David Strom meets African-American singer Delia Daley at Marian Anderson's landmark 1939 outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial. They marry despite her family's objections, and the children they raise grow up immersed in music. The oldest, Jonah, has talent that is undeniable. The second, Joseph, has the talent without the temperament. The youngest, Ruth, immerses herself in the black activist movement. The three Stroms grow up on an awkward place along the color line at a time when everything having to do with color was dynamite.This is the most successful of Powers' novels in that it combines accessibility with his exciting strength of ideas. You can certainly pick at a few things about characterization and the placement of characters in the path of too many historical events, but overall it is a very satisfying book and a great deal of thought-provoking pleasure will be found between its covers.

The Time of Our Singing is filled with Richard Powers' usual ambitious and startling gumbo of history and science (how the future and the past collaborate themselves into existence in this novel is utterly thrilling), but Singing rises above his other remarkable novels, I believe, because of the characters who come so alive in these pages. They're all deeply flawed individuals who still elicit the reader's interest and sympathy. Their wounds are so familiar, steeped in and beyond race, and I wanted them to be better than they were, kinder, happier, and yet people are who they are, and it's the gap between could and should, want to and can't that give these characters such life. David Strom and Delia Daley fall enough in love to ignore their racial divide, but the world is unwilling to forgive them--or their children. Though the parents try to forge their childrens' strength in the making of music, this talented family can't hold together their own song. Poor Joseph is paralyzed by his devotion to his gifted brother, Jonah, who in turn treats Joseph to off-handed, casual cruelty. Sister Ruth is treated almost as an afterthought, and so rejects one family and forges another. Meanwhile, history begins to pick them off, one by one. A tragic, haunting story--not only of a family but of our country, as well--and yet oddly hopeful. Throughout the sweep of this marvelous novel these complex characters held me, and now I find they won't let me go.