1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quiet, remarkable stories, May 29, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Listening to Mozart (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Hardcover)
Charles Wyatt's book is something to be read aloud. These superbly crafted stories are both absorbing and lyrical; there's nothing flimsy or gimmicky about them. "Ghosts" and "Listening to Mozart" were especially well done--deep but not without comical flavor. Wyatt's character never takes himself too seriously--he intuitively seems to understand that the biggest events in life happen regardless of his plans. I sincerely hope that Wyatt writes another book.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Music Along With Life's Ups and Downs., September 11, 2005
This review is from: Listening to Mozart (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Hardcover)
This chronicles the life of James Baxter, a flutist and "tunes the reader's ear to the innermost thoughts of a musician." 'Bach Suite' sets the mood with the prologue. LISTENING TO MOZART reminds me of an acquaintenance who wouldn't (or couldn't) ask his father to listen to Enya -- it would embarrass them both, he said, as his dad listens only to Wagner while in his basement workroom. How can anyone be so narrow? What is it when a 48-yr-old son can't share a different type of music (Enya) with his own dad?
In these stories pieced together with a music theme, James "finds himself experiencing his life in much the way he experiences music." In Philadelphia, he acquires a jazz bagpipe, an instrument intended to frighten whole armies. The first time I met Bob the bookseller, he was wearing one of his fantastic kilts. I asked if he played the bagpipes, and explained that I always take pictures of the group blowing and hawing during the parades on Gay Street. He said that he plays them in his shop, on a CD. He was clever and had a beautiful variety of items for sale in his book store. His was the only shop with "class" on Market Square, but something happened to cause him to stop wearing his trademark kilts, then he ups and moves away without fanfare. I miss him.
Charles Wyatt plays flute with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. I have attended one of their performances, three years ago when Michael Feinstein was a guest artist. My eldest son played flute and piccolo and was concertmaster of his high school band. The other two played the same trombone several years apart. James was in the U. S. Marine Band during the Vietnam War.
At age fourteen, he'd played a Mozart flute concerto at the state band competition and won the blue ribbon. Everything he did or thought concerned classical music or was interwoven in his imagination. That music was his life, as pop music was and still is (after all these years) mine. I lost my singing voice a very long time ago but, thanks to Music Of Your Life, I can still feel the same (or similar) feelings I had when I first heard those songs. Listening is my game; it keeps me "youthful" as, inside, I am still that same girl who sang 'Tammy' acappella in 1957 on the stage of the Tennessee Theatre and had the audience bewitched.
James lived a strange existence with his first love, Zoe, in the Seventies and, later, Anna, along with various and sundry "others." He was a child of Aquarius. I knew one. They are the most musically talented.
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