The Maestro [Mass Market Paperback]

Tim Wynne-Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998 | Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Burl's father abuses him so badly that he's forced to run away from home. Alone in the Canadian wilderness, he is sure he won't make it--until he meets Nathaniel Orlando Gow, the Maestro. In just one day, this eccentric musical genius changes Burl's life forever--opening him up to a world he will fight to keep, even if it means telling the biggest lie of his life. A tantalizing coming-of-age story. Complex and poignant, wrapped around a dramatic story line. --Publishers Weekly, starred review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The wilderness of northwest Ontario is a fitting setting for this tantalizing coming-of-age story about an abused boy, Burl, whose pervasive sense of isolation is cracked by an encounter with a famous pianist. When Burl runs away from home, he follows the sound of piano music and finds its source in an unlikely, pyramid-like cabin. There, the Maestro, as Burl is instructed to call him, having fled busy Toronto and the demands of his public, is trying to finish writing his great oratorio before he dies. When the quirky Maestro leaves Burl in charge of the cabin and his grand piano, Burl thinks he's found a haven-but it's not long before events hurl the teen into a web of other people's plans and back to his own family trauma. Wynne-Jones's (Some of the Kinder Planets) builds strong, multidimensional characters; Burl's father Cal both teaches his son about fishing lures and punches him in the face; Burl triumphantly dreams of living alone but is desolate that his parents never bothered to report him missing; the Maestro loves nature but fears wildlife. Complex and poignant, wrapped around a dramatic story line, this book won Canada's Governor General's Award for Children's Literature in 1995. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-9. After observing his violent, abusive father's rendezvous with a waitress, Burl Crow runs away. He heads into the Canadian wilderness and discovers the retreat of Nathaniel Orlando Gow, an eccentric, world-renowned pianist. During their brief encounter, they become friends and Gow tells the boy about the oratorio he is composing. The man returns to Toronto and suddenly dies. After receiving the bad news from Bea, Gow's supply pilot, Burl begins living a lie of his own creation?that he is the Maestro's illegitimate son. Bea sends him to Toronto to make a claim for the lake and cabin, but instead he seeks out Gow's friend, who encourages him to rescue the oratorio. On his way back north, Burl is helped by a former teacher who offers him a home. He is trailed by his father who, in a drunken rage, sets the hideaway on fire. Everything?including Gow's piano and oratorio?is destroyed and Burl, seeing his father engulfed in flames, saves him. Complicated? Yes, and not totally convincing. Wynne-Jones's writing is powerful in its description of individuals and situations, but does not probe either in much depth. Burl often seems naive and younger than his 14 years. His feelings for his father are not strongly portrayed, yet the novel hangs on actions that result from these feelings. Characters are drawn and then dropped, and their stories never lead anywhere except to move Burl toward a rather unrealistic ending. A complex novel that may not hold readers' interest.?Wendy D. Caldiero, New York Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Puffin (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140387056
• ISBN-13: 978-0140387056
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,080,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving story that both adults and youngsters can value, February 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Maestro (Hardcover)

This book, written for "young adults", can be read and appreciated by people of any age. It is both unsentimental and uncompromising, yet positive in its outlook; and although it certainly has no "happy ending" it leaves the reader with a sense of hope both for the book's young hero and humanity in general. It concerns a young boy who is forced rather suddenly to confront the problems of growing up and facing a rather impersonal and uncaring adult world that offers no concessions to his youth and inexperience.This fourteen-year-old boy, Burl Crow, lives in northern Canada with his violent bully of a father and his defeated mother who has retreated into a haze of comforting medication, and is no longer able to intervene to help her son in his struggle to survive his father's abuse. Eventually the boy flees his intolerable situation and runs away from home into the forest wilderness where, although he knows a fair deal about survival in the bush, he realises he is too young to survive alone and unaided. But here, in a cottage by a lake, he encounters 'the Maestro', a strange and reclusive musician who is trying to escape from the pressures of his woldwide fame and the conventions of city life by losing himself in the solitude of the North , where he can think, compose music, and breathe free of the unwanted intrusions of society.This strange and somewhat eccentric man (the character is definitely based on the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould; all the ideas, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies are his although the author has admitted he changed the name to avoid any disputes or restrictions imposed by the lawyers of Gould's estate) is persuaded somewhat reluctantly to offer shelter to the young boy, and they strike up an odd and hesitant friendship that you feel will ultimately benefit both the inexperienced boy who has learnt the hard way to hide his feelings and trust nobody, and the lonely and admittedly eccentric older man who obviously has problems relating to other human beings yet lives passionately for his art. Both have trouble understanding the other, yet a certain respect and acceptance grows between them, and the reader feels that the boy even begins to feel a kind of exasperated love for his awkward companion that he could never feel for his real father. What happens next has a feeling of inevitability. It is sad, even tragic, and by the end of the book the reader is left with a vast regret for the loss of something wonderful and irreplaceable; the boy is forced against his will into action to save the abusive father who returns into his life, and thereby loses a great dream he had for the future.But his encounter with the Maestro, although uncompromising and not perhaps helpful in a practical or protective way, has changed him forever and given him the power to face the future with strength and confidence. This is a positive book, although disturbing in parts. The relationship it depicts makes the reader consider that there are ways of changing and evolving and helping each other that are subtle and perhaps not easy to express in words; the author shows how this can come about simply by two people experiencing and respecting each other without really intervening actively with each others lives. Burl Crow has to grow up depending on his own thoughts and decisions, without relying on anyone in the outside world to help, yet he is enabled to do this largely by a chance encounter with a very strange and wonderful man...so we are left with a sense of hope after all. Read this book. You will be glad you did.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving story that both adults and youngsters can value, February 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Maestro (Hardcover)

This book, written for "young adults", can be read and appreciated by people of any age. It is both unsentimental and uncompromising, yet positive in its outlook; and although it certainly has no "happy ending" it leaves the reader with a sense of hope both for the book's young hero and humanity in general. It concerns a young boy who is forced rather suddenly to confront the problems of growing up and facing a rather impersonal and uncaring adult world that offers no concessions to his youth and inexperience.This fourteen-year-old boy, Burl Crow, lives in northern Canada with his violent bully of a father and his defeated mother who has retreated into a haze of comforting medication, and is no longer able to intervene to help her son in his struggle to survive his father's abuse. Eventually the boy flees his intolerable situation and runs away from home into the forest wilderness where, although he knows a fair deal about survival in the bush, he realises he is too young to survive alone and unaided. But here, in a cottage by a lake, he encounters 'the Maestro', a strange and reclusive musician who is trying to escape from the pressures of his woldwide fame and the conventions of city life by losing himself in the solitude of the North , where he can think, compose music, and breathe free of the unwanted intrusions of society.This strange and somewhat eccentric man (the character is definitely based on the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould; all the ideas, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies are his although the author has admitted he changed the name to avoid any disputes or restrictions imposed by the lawyers of Gould's estate) is persuaded somewhat reluctantly to offer shelter to the young boy, and they strike up an odd and hesitant friendship that you feel will ultimately benefit both the inexperienced boy who has learnt the hard way to hide his feelings and trust nobody, and the lonely and admittedly eccentric older man who obviously has problems relating to other human beings yet lives passionately for his art. Both have trouble understanding the other, yet a certain respect and acceptance grows between them, and the reader feels that the boy even begins to feel a kind of exasperated love for his awkward companion that he could never feel for his real father. What happens next has a feeling of inevitability. It is sad, even tragic, and by the end of the book the reader is left with a vast regret for the loss of something wonderful and irreplaceable; the boy is forced against his will into action to save the abusive father who returns into his life, and thereby loses a great dream he had for the future.But his encounter with the Maestro, although uncompromising and not perhaps helpful in a practical or protective way, has changed him forever and given him the power to face the future with strength and confidence. This is a positive book, although disturbing in parts. The relationship it depicts makes the reader consider that there are ways of changing and evolving and helping each other that are subtle and perhaps not easy to express in words; the author shows how this can come about simply by two people experiencing and respecting each other without really intervening actively with each others lives. Burl Crow has to grow up depending on his own thoughts and decisions, without relying on anyone in the outside world to help, yet he is enabled to do this largely by a chance encounter with a very strange and wonderful man...so we are left with a sense of hope after all. Read this book. You will be glad you did.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book -- for both children and adults, April 30, 2000

By 

Anne M. Marble "Anne" (MD, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Maestro (Mass Market Paperback)

Maybe I'm biased about this book because the character of "The Maestro" (Nathaniel Orlando Gow) is obviously based on Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Nope. It would still be a good book, even if the character were based on, say, Mitch Miller.

Tim Wynne-Jones understands more about childhood and relationships than a lot of writers. Don't expect the usual out of this book. There is action and drama, but it is also a subtle book in many ways.