Chamber Music (Paperback)

by Doris Grumbach (Author) "I HAVE DECIDED to write this account because, long as my life has been, it has given me no opportunity before this to say what..." (more)
Key Phrases: great bed, New York, Frau Mundlein, Della Fox (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Doris Grumbach's Chamber Music has made a considerable impression on me. . . . It is a haunting story, all the more powerful because of the elegant economy of the writing. (Barbara Pym )

It is as if Willa Cather had decided to tell the whole truth. It is Virginia Woolf without the evasive prettifying. . . . One of those rare novels written for adults who listen. (John Leonard -New York Times )

What a strange, haunting, stately book it is, and literally unputdownable, because Brumbach so gently tugs a reader through it with persuasions and limited promises and mysteries. (Penelope Mortimer )

Product Description

"I believe Chamber Music will be a classic. It deserves to be." —Alice Walker Caroline Maclaren, the ninety-year-old widow of a famous American composer, reaches back into her memories to tell the story of their life together. In setting the stage for her extraordinary tale, she recreates the aura of turn-of-the-century Frankfurt, Boston, and Saratoga Springs and of an age when private passions were hidden below the surfaces of private selves. She recalls her marriage as a sheltered young woman to the brilliantly promising Robert Maclaren, his swift rise to international musical fame, the darker story of his angry silences, and eventually, the grim details of his illness and death. In the final phase of her story she tells of the late-blossoming passion she discovers with Anna, the serene nurse who tended Robert in his dying days, and about the artists' colony they found as a tribute to his life and work.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (February 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393309452
• ISBN-13: 978-0393309454
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,791,521 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Doris Grumbach has worked wonders with this book!, August 23, 1998

By	Sally Lee ([e-mail]) (United States) - See all my reviews

The book "Chamber Music" was very touching. It takes one back into the life of Caroline Maclaren as she tells her story of the most important people to her, throughout her whole entire life.

She tells of the the life behind marrying a composer who puts everything into music, and cares nothing of his surroundings. Later in her years, she has learned to love someone unexpectedlyl. The later years in her life, were the happiest yet, because she has learned to love someone, and that someone wasn't her husband, the composer, but a companion and friend she has made through caring for her husband before he died.

Doris Grumbach has worked wonders with this book. Her writing is very strong and caring. She wrote with feelings as if her, herself, was in the body of Caroline Maclaren. This book is worth it! It will shock you and touch your heart at the same time!

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little-Known Masterpiece, October 21, 2008

By	A reader (New York City) - See all my reviews

Doris Grumbach is a respected journalist, teacher, and author of novels, memoirs and biography, whose fiction is not that well known despite critical acclaim. CHAMBER MUSIC, like most of her other novels, is in the genre of historical fiction. Using real people from the past as her jumping-off point, Grumbach creates novels of uncommon dignity, detail, subtlety and pathos. CHAMBER MUSIC is loosely based upon the lives of American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian. Grumbach incorporates real events into the plot, such as Marian's founding of the MacDowell Artists Colony. Edward died in 1908, and Marian in 1956. What was Marian's life like prior to, during, and following Edward's death? CHAMBER MUSIC imagines the answers to these questions by having Marian's fictionalized counterpart tell the story.

Without giving away the plot, which is well worth discovering as you read, I will say that Grumbach has drawn a very sad and realistic portrayal of a couple trapped in a marriage of convenience and the toll it takes on them both, especially the wife, due to her lack of options at the time.

One of Grumbach's great strengths is her ability to illustrate underlying political realities in a way that focuses on plot and characters, rather than ideology. Her message, such as it is, is woven into the story and never feels didactic. In this manner, she brings to life the reason why politics matters in the first place. In CHAMBER MUSIC, Grumbach tackles the issue of homosexuality in turn-of-the-20th-century America, when people were forced to hide their sexual preferences as a matter of life and death. CHAMBER MUSIC illustrates concretely how "being in the closet" destroyed peoples' lives.

However, there is another, more universal message in CHAMBER MUSIC: the healing power of love, which can come unbidden and in unexpected forms, if we are open to receiving it.

This is a heartbreaking gem of a book, and one of my very favorites.