Sight Reading: A Novel

by Daphne Kalotay

Overview

Lyrical and evocative, Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay is an intense, literary love story.

When Hazel and Remy happen upon each other on a warm Boston spring day, their worlds immediately begin to spin. Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to composer Nicholas Elko, who was once the love of Hazel's life. Over the decades, each buried secrets, disappointments, and betrayals that now threaten to undermine their happiness.

We follow the notes of their complicated, intertwined lives from 1987 to 2007, from Europe to America, and from conservatory life to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sight Reading, from the author of the acclaimed debut novel Russian Winter, is an exploration of what makes a family, of the importance of art in daily life, and of the role of intuition in both the creative process and the evolution of the self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062253798
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/21/2013
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	501
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Daphne Kalotay is the author of the award-winning novel Russian Winter, which has been published in twenty languages, and the fiction collection Calamity and Other Stories. She has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, and has taught at Boston University, Skidmore College, Grub Street, and Middlebury College. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

What People are Saying About This

Nancy Richler

“SIGHT READING is at once a compelling story about love, loss and music in four interwoven lives, and an insightful exploration of the sources and expression of creativity. The results are compulsively readable, memorable and wise.”

Tom Perrotta

“Set in the hothouse world of classical music, this wise, elegant novel maps the fallout from a passionate affair over the course of two decades. . . . Daphne Kalotay writes with grace and authority, paying equal attention to the artistic and emotional lives of her characters.”

Edith Pearlman

This entertaining novel follows a group of musicians through twenty years of disappointments and betrayals; lusts, regrets, afflictions, and delusions; rehearsals, recombinations, and revelations... and performances. Your ears will be ringing. - Edith Pearlman, award-winning author of Binocular Vision

Editorial Reviews

Kalotay celebrates art . . . in prose that is brisk and concise as well as sensuous and sumptuous . . . A fictive musical and familial feast.

Booklist (starred review)

Kalotay’s thoughtful insights on artistic endeavors add depth to this graceful book.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

SIGHT READING is at once a compelling story about love, loss and music in four interwoven lives, and an insightful exploration of the sources and expression of creativity. The results are compulsively readable, memorable and wise.

Nancy Richler

Set in the hothouse world of classical music, this wise, elegant novel maps the fallout from a passionate affair over the course of two decades. . . . Daphne Kalotay writes with grace and authority, paying equal attention to the artistic and emotional lives of her characters.

Tom Perrotta

Kalotay’s writing is clear and evocative…. [She] infuses each of the characters with total believability stemming from her understanding of classical music and her perceptions of human nature. She is a very wise writer…and her brilliant intuitions are augmented by her lyrical writing.

Toronto Star

The characters about which Kalotay writes are deeply flawed, but also talented and fascinating to read about.

Bookreporter.com

Ms. Kalotay manages to capture the fleeting exultation that performers feel whenever they play. It is as if she has been on stage, bow in hand, ready to make or break her career with a single piece of music:.

New York Journal of Books

This entertaining novel follows a group of musicians through twenty years of disappointments and betrayals; lusts, regrets, afflictions, and delusions; rehearsals, recombinations, and revelations.

Edith Pearlman

Kalotay “takes great pains to get the little details right, both musical and geographical, and the resulting read is engaging and often insightful.... [S]urprising and satisfying...with some delightfully vivid writing.

Boston Globe

In her second novel (after Russian Winter), Kalotay returns again to a rarified artistic world where the pursuit of art and beauty clashes with the less noble realities of human interaction. Beautiful Hazel and her talented husband Nicholas Elko are itinerant newlyweds, following his composing career across Europe with their small daughter, when they alight in Boston for a guest conductorship at the conservatory there. But it’s not just another stop on the world tour that’s continually burnished Nicholas’s renown; that the couple’s stay in Boston will change the course of their lives. Remy, a second violin with frizzled hair and untrammeled desires, is drawn in by the conductor’s magnetism. Nicholas doesn’t fight the attraction, and soon leaves Hazel to marry the younger, less beautiful woman. The story follows this triangle from 1987 to 2007 through the insular world of classical music in Boston. Their ties complicate and enrich each character’s life, raising questions about the price of beauty, the power of art, and the shifting nature of identity. While the story eventually loses steam, Kalotay writes elegantly and ably about music and emotion, drafting a moving meditation on the sacrifices made for art and the mysteries of the heart. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME Entertainment. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Kalotay “takes great pains to get the little details right, both musical and geographical, and the resulting read is engaging and often insightful.... [S]urprising and satisfying...with some delightfully vivid writing.” — Boston Globe

“Set in the hothouse world of classical music, this wise, elegant novel maps the fallout from a passionate affair over the course of two decades. . . . Daphne Kalotay writes with grace and authority, paying equal attention to the artistic and emotional lives of her characters.” — Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers

“This entertaining novel follows a group of musicians through twenty years of disappointments and betrayals; lusts, regrets, afflictions, and delusions; rehearsals, recombinations, and revelations.” — Edith Pearlman, award-winning author of Binocular Vision

“SIGHT READING is at once a compelling story about love, loss and music in four interwoven lives, and an insightful exploration of the sources and expression of creativity. The results are compulsively readable, memorable and wise.” — Nancy Richler, award-winning author of The Imposter Bride

“Kalotay’s thoughtful insights on artistic endeavors add depth to this graceful book.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Kalotay writes elegantly and ably about music and emotion, drafting a moving meditation on the sacrifices made for art and the mysteries of the heart.” — Publishers Weekly

“Kalotay’s soulful second novel chronicles the collateral damage three classical musicians inflict on the people who love them. Merging two inherently incompatible modes of expression, writing and music, presents a formidable challenge-one Kalotay rises to admirably here.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Kalotay celebrates art . . . in prose that is brisk and concise as well as sensuous and sumptuous . . . A fictive musical and familial feast.” — Booklist (starred review)

“[Kalotay] really shines when discussing musicians making music…[and] she effectively shows us how performing artists live. Much as we ourselves do, except they then get to create something gorgeous. — Library Journal

“Ms. Kalotay manages to capture the fleeting exultation that performers feel whenever they play. It is as if she has been on stage, bow in hand, ready to make or break her career with a single piece of music:.” — New York Journal of Books

“The characters about which Kalotay writes are deeply flawed, but also talented and fascinating to read about.” — Bookreporter.com

“Kalotay’s writing is clear and evocative…. [She] infuses each of the characters with total believability stemming from her understanding of classical music and her perceptions of human nature. She is a very wise writer…and her brilliant intuitions are augmented by her lyrical writing.” — Toronto Star

From the Publisher

Kalotay's soulful second novel chronicles the collateral damage three classical musicians inflict on the people who love them. Merging two inherently incompatible modes of expression, writing and music, presents a formidable challenge--one Kalotay rises to admirably here. Even tone-deaf readers will readily grasp the technical aspects of violinist Remy's struggles to attain the first chair that seems forever beyond her reach. Likewise, readers will understand why composer and conductor Nicholas, although he attains a certain level of fame and prosperity (enough to incite the envy of his best friend and colleague Yoni), can never complete his masterwork. Nicholas, Remy and Yoni all teach or study at a prestigious Boston conservatory, and Remy will later play with the Boston Symphony. In their insular world, impulses that defy musical expression are, too often, deployed to wreak havoc in others' lives. Remy's infatuation with Nicholas breaks up his marriage to art historian Hazel, and though Remy will help co-parent Jessie, child of Hazel and Nicholas, her desire for a child of her own will lead to a disastrous interlude with Yoni that will prove life-altering for all three musicians. The book revisits the characters at 10-year intervals and thus becomes a meditation on aging, regret and forgiveness. The plainspoken prose is the ideal accompaniment to these lives, but the characterization of the women is more detailed and grounded. Nicholas' passivity--he is more acted upon than active in shaping his own destiny--and solipsism--the way he can inflict hurt on Remy and Hazel without, seemingly, noticing or caring--is particularly confounding: Why is he the focus of so much yearning? By the time Hazel and Remy realize that Nicholas is an exaltation of style over substance, each is compelled to delude herself that the years they invested in him were not wasted. Unfortunately, just when the motifs of cognitive dissonance and self-deception are about to deliver a fitting climax, the piece resolves with an anodyne coda of unearned redemption.

Kirkus Reviews