Customer Reviews

The Kreutzer Sonata: A Novel (Kreutzersonate)

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Tolstoy's novella entitled "The Kreutzer Sonata" inspired composer Leos Janacek to write his Kreutzer Sonata for strings, years later, and that, in turn, inspired Margriet de Moor to create this novella. In Tolstoy's story, a man on a train tells another passenger the story of how and why he murdered his wife. The man and his wife were both musicians, and the husband, insanely jealous, believed she was having an affair with another musician.

Adapting Tolstoy's passionate and violent story, de Moor introduces an unnamed narrator, a musicologist, who meets Marius Van Vlooten, a blind music critic, at an airport as they are both leaving for International String Quartet Week in Bordeaux. While there, the narrator introduces Suzanna Flier, the beautiful first violinist of the Schulhoff Quartet to Van Vlooten, whose previous relationship was so passionate that Van Vlooten blinded himself in a failed suicide attempt when his lover left him. Suzanna Flier's quartet has been practicing Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata, "a fatal psychological drama that no earthly power could bring to a halt." Soon Suzanna and Van Vlooten are engaged in a torrid affair.

Ten years later, the narrator sees Van Vlooten again at an airport, and, through flashbacks, Van Vlooten tells the narrator the story of his marriage to Suzanna, which was marred by his uncontrollable jealousy. Sixteen years after this meeting, the narrator, on his way to Amsterdam learns the conclusion of the story.

Author de Moor's tautly constructed and romantic story explores the relationship of Suzanna Flier and Marius Van Vlooten. Symbols (butterflies, water), like musical motifs in a sonata, abound in the novel. In crystalline prose, de Moor selects details which reveal the point of view of a man dependent upon sound, instead of sight--"Trees are only trees as long as the wind blows." As he creates Van Vlooten's life with Suzanna, the reader alternately sympathizes with Van Vlooten and becomes angry with him because he uses his need for consistency as a means of control.

De Moor does an admirable job of giving an old story a new twist, and her conclusion is surprising. Romantic in that the action is often implausible and carried to extremes, the novel is nevertheless fascinating reading. De Moor is so observant of details and conveys them so perceptively that the reader cannot help but feel that s/he is learning something new--about the blind, about musicians, and about lovers as they interpret their worlds. Mary Whipple

(This review is dedicated to the memory of Bob Zeidler, a highly ranked Amazon reviewer, music critic, and friend, who passed away this year.)

Although I basically agree with the previous reviewer, Mary Whipple, about the elegance of the writing in this short novel, I found myself vastly unsatisfied with it overall, largely because I had expectations - admittedly my own and probably not shared by other readers - that there would be insights about music. Here at Amazon I am primarily a reviewer of classical music CDs and DVDs, but I occasionally review books that have a musical background (and I recently highly recommended a first novel, 'The Student Conductor' by Robert Ford). Of course the present novel was inspired by both Tolstoy's novella and by Janácek's string quartet subtitled 'The Kreutzer Sonata,' which had been prompted by Janácek's own tortured love for a much younger woman. Margriet de Moor, however able a writer she is, takes these two classics and writes a meta-novel that is not nearly as effective as either the Tolstoy or the Janácek. Indeed, it almost feels as if what she has done is simply rip off the better-known works.

The surprise at the end of de Moor's novel is neither satisfying nor psychologically particularly convincing. I am giving the book three stars only because of the elegant prose, and some of the credit for that surely goes to the translator from the original Dutch, Susan Massotty.

Scott Morrison

Dutch author, Margriet de Moor is the author of eight novels including The Duke of Egypt and Virtuoso, both of which now join The Kreutzer Sonata in English-language translations. She resides in Amsterdam. Her books are international bestsellers.

Tolstoy's novella and Janacek's sonata both bear the same name as this book: Kreutzer. Margriet de Moor weaves an intricate tale based on the premise of the novella, the emotional connection that novella has with the music in Janacek's music, and a handful of finely crafted characters for her own story.

A young musicologist, who remains unnamed throughout the book, is the narrator of this spiderweb of a story. When musicologist meets up with a renowned music critic by the name of Marius van Vlooten, their conversations carry the reader across the miles and years of their musical connection. The critic, blinded by his failed attempt to commit suicide over a failed relationship, and the musicologist travel to music festivals throughout the European cultural circuit. During their conversations en route to such events, the reader gains insight into the back story as well as the unfolding current story of van Vlooten's life.

As the story unfolds, the reader is given glimpses into the sightless life of van Vlooten - a life that, by virtue of his blindness, has resulted in an increased ability to use other senses in the absence of sight. The Tolstoy novella focuses on a tragic tale of love, deception, and loss. When Janacek wrote his sonata for four stringed instruments, the notes played out the same emotions as Tolstoy's words. The conductor of the string quartet tells his musicians to "humanize" the notes. And so, de Moor humanizes the condition as well as the notes for her readers. The reader comes to realize that the characters in this book are influenced by what is seen and unseen alike...and by what only the heart can hear and interpret - the language of music.

With the musicologist serving as his eyes, van Vlooten, who spent some ten or more years building a fortress against any future love interest, meets one of the members of the stringed quartet playing Janacek's sonata - Suzanna, the first violinist. Eventually, Suzanna and van Vlooten marry but the marriage is doomed by the ghosts of van Vlooten's past. He suspects that his wife is having an affair with another member of the quartet - as was the plot in the Tolstoy novella. From the first moment of suspicion, van Vlooten's life unravels in a tragic and sometimes unpredicatable way.

Tolstoy, Janacek and de Moor all collide to create a sparse yet insightful study of the human condition in all of its fraility. Eventually, van Vlooten realizes that he and he alone has ruined his life. The web of uncertainty, scorned love, and bitterness combined with the inability to allow himself to love freely and unconditionally all work against him and his relationship with Suzanna.

To this reader/writer, the story's end could easily be an ending to a scripted Twilight Zone episode. But, you will have to draw your own conclusions when you have read the last word and heard the last note of the Kreutzer Sonata.

by Lee Ambrose
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women