Potpourri

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Once in a great while, a reader is lucky enough to encounter a remarkable book. Sheet Music by M.J. Rose may just be one of those books. Unconventional and disturbing, the novel has passages so beautiful that I had to read them over and over until they were etched on my mind’s eye. The prose is visual and visceral, from the food-laden sensuality of the first scene, to the serene finale. It is underscored with music, as the title suggests, as well as the double-entendre of the bedroom. It is also hard a difficult book to describe.

Justine Pagett has come home to America after several years of self-exile in Paris. Struck down with the grief of her mother’s illness and death, she fled to France, where the memories would be muted with distance and time. A journalist, she has become embroiled in an ugly scandal and hopes to revive her career with a coup - the biography of Sophie DeLyon, a media-shy composer and conductor who is embracing the project with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

One of Justine’s sources is Austen Bell, former student and former son-in-law of the world famous musician. A well-known cellist, Austen is also the lover that held Justine together as her mother was dying. This past association is making them both wary and uncomfortable.

As Justine begins her project, it becomes quite clear that things are not going to be easy. Not only does Justine encounter many people with their own agendas to promote, but there is one group that does not want the project to be completed. Justine begins receiving threatening messages and at the moment she is to meet Sophie DeLyon, the composer disappears.