Customer Reviews

Mozart's Ghost: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

We don't ask much from our romantic novels and movies. We know how they're going to end; we just want to be entertained with a few clever twists along the way. But aside from the very nice inclusion of a celebrity ghost, this by-the-numbers romance is infuriatingly predictable. And it's almost fatally hampered by the fact that Anna, a spirit medium and the main character, is insufferably, unrelentingly cranky and none too bright. She's her own worst enemy so often that it becomes hard to root for her, and even harder to see why the other characters seem to like her. The devices and complications that keep the lovers apart are uninspired, the supporting characters are nice but lightly sketched, and there's no sparkling dialogue or emotional energy to make us think that the two would-be lovers are brought together by anything except mutual loneliness. Add to that an unavoidable suspicion that the author is cynically outlining the film adaptation as she goes along, and a last page resolution that feels rushed and unsatisfying. There's nice writing here, breezy and humorous at times, but it doesn't make up for a dull ride.

Anna is thirty-something, solitary and a bit waspish. She has left Kalamazoo, Michigan and this novels finds her living in The Big Apple. By day she is a teacher. By night she is a medium who helps her clients connect to 'the other side' and converse with their dearly departed.

One day,late for work she leaves her apartment only to find the lobby blocked by the arrival of a giant grand piano, its owner a giant red headed pianist who is moving into her building. Later she discovers his name is Edward. Suddenly Anna finds her concentration broken by the red head's constant practicing. He has arrived in New York to intensively practice for an important piano competition. The noise interferes with her contact with 'the other side'. In addition she finds herself intruded upon by the ghost of Mozart who gloats over the brilliant performance of Edward and urges her 'to be nice to him'. Even worse the pianist seems to be everywhere, taking up her regular booth at her favorite Greek diner, impringing upon her use of the laundry room, even befriending her annoying brother who has temporarily moved in with her.

Will Anna and Edward find true love? Will Edward win the competition? You can easily guess the answers. The novel is endlessly repetitive. Anna can't sleep, she can't share her Edward plight with her drop-dead gorgeous best friend Stacy. She makes repeated trip to the basement to do her laundary, tabloid papers in hand, or makes trips to the Greek diner as the plot moves forward at a snail's pace. She endlessly ruminates about whether she should reveal her night-time profession to Edward. Should she tell him? If she does will he still love her? Not hard to figure out the end.

Along the tedious way we are treated to an assortment of cliched characters -a jolly gay principal, his mean spirted gay friend who is a clairvoyant, an exotic bi-sexual man named Tommy who is constantly flirting with Anna and trying to get her into bed, the friendly waiter at the diner, and of course the gorgeous best friend. Interspersed with these are juvenile letters that Edwards sends home to a childless couple who are financing his stay in New York while he works towards winning the competition. One cliche is piled upon another.

It takes half the novel for Edward and Anna to get together: another quarter of the novel for Anna to obsess over calling Edward after their first liasion, and the final quarter of the book to finally tell Edward her secret profession.

The fact that this dreadful mess was written by a woman who is considered a master at leading others to fulfill their creative potential makes matters even worse. Save your money and your eyesight. Don't buy this book. I wish Amazon made it possible to give this zero stars.

I have never read anything by Julia Cameron, but I saw a rather positive review of this book in a magazine and decided to purchase it. Being a music teacher, I was interested to see how Mozart was portrayed. I have to say the book was a nice, quick read - and it was enjoyable. I have to disagree with a review I read that stated that a whole bunch of the book was dedicated to her agonizing over whether to tell Edward about being a medium or not. Yes it is a major point toward the end of the book (not a majority of the book), but it is a question that is true to the story, and is true to the character and her history. The characters are enjoyable as is the overall story. I found Mozart to be rather funny, though certainly nothing new is presented about him (which wasn't the point of the book anyway!) I recommend this book as light reading for those who just enjoy spending time with a good book.

I picked this up despite the unimaginative title, based on the celebrity reviews on the back, and the author's reputation for knowing how to tap into the creative spirit (no pun intended). There was just enough decent writing to keep me reading until the end, but the plot was so predictable it felt like I was watching a made-for-TV movie (LIfetime, not HBO). I did actually enjoy reading about Anna's life as a medium- that was interesting. Being a musician myself, I can also say that the parts about Edward's hermitlike endeavors were a true enough potrayal. And Anna's neurotic thoughts and behavior seemed typical enough of most women I know who are in love (or maybe I just hang out with crazy, OCD women).

The Mozart parts I found annoying, and not because I do or don't like Mozart (both, is actually the case). Also cloying were Edward's letters.

If you're looking for some light, entertaining reading that is not too challenging, this could do the trick for you. Just make sure you read some Dostoevsky afterwards to balance your literary diet.

This uninspiring story introduces you to Anna, a Midwest transplant to New York City who fills in as a substitute teacher during the day to give the appearance of normality, but her evenings are dedicated to psychic readings.

Always seen as the misfit and wacko, Anna guards her secret to the point of rarely letting anyone in. Then one day her life is thrown into turmoil as a concert pianist moves into her very quiet apartment building and with his constant playing her psychic vibes are thrown into a turmoil. That is until Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appears and torments her into providing help, and calming, to a very stressed pianist who just happens to be preparing for the concert performance of his life performing Mozart's work.. With Anna's, and Mozarts help, Edward is finally able to bring his rather non-conformists ways to a reasonable existence.

Overall the book seemed to lack a crescendo. The psychic reading were interesting, but the romance that was budding between Anna and Edward seemed more of a high school romance then two grown adults and was rather unimaginative.

I was just about to choose another book-on-cd from the library shelf when my 8-year old daughter suggested I try this one. I'm guessing she thought the title sounded interesting. I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. Big mistake.

I don't even know where to start except by saying that the other reviewers who gave this book a one-star rating are spot-on. The chapters were short and choppy, many times with no relevance to anything important. The author tries to leave you hanging but there is nothing that really comes from it. The main character is such a bratty, negative person that after the zillionth day in a row of being in a bad mood, I wondered how it was different from any other day - so why bother with the adjectives used to describe her mood? Speaking of adjectives, the author uses the same repetitive wording OVER AND OVER. The scenarios were also very unlikely. How is it that Anna never encounters anyone else in the laundry room other than Edward? Every time she went dowstairs to do laundry, I thought 'I wonder how long before Edward ends up down there as well.' Speaking of Edward, his letters home were soooo annoying. The speaker's voice was even annoying. I'm getting annoyed just thinking of this book.

The book-on-cd is 8 cds long, and I am stopping at the 5th one. It was hard enough to get to this point, but I didn't want to give up on something my daughter had picked out. I feel bad for giving such a negative review, but I just feel compelled to warn others.

I am a bit of a romanticist. I am also a piano player and a lover of classical music and Mozart as well. This story intrigued me at first but after reading the book I found it to be perfectly....well...boring. So much could have been done with such a storyline. This was so dull I couldn't wait for it to end....but I kept reading anyway ...thinking there might be a good ending.....boy was I ever wrong......NOT EVEN WORTH ONE STAR RATING.

Mozart is my favorite composer and when I saw this book on the shelf I thought it would be a fun read. I was almost immediately distraught by the author's description of Ann Arbor Michigan and how the Anna was considered a weirdo. Makes me think that the author needed a Mid-Western location and just blindly poked a pin in a map. Other cities in Michigan fit her description of conservative living, Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, does not.

When Anna calls her brother in Kalamazoo, MI and the author mentions the time difference between MI and NY, I had to quit. I don't know how factual the NY descriptives are, but she messed up bit on her research. I also find it implausible that one would fly from LaGuardia to the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport and then drive to Ann Arbor rather than fly to Detroit.

After reading the other comments, I'm not going to continue with this book.

I could only get through about 64 pages of this book before giving up, for a number of reasons. The story didn't grab me; I don't believe it is possible to communicate with the dead; and the editing was terrible (there were glaring spelling mistakes). Also, I think if a person is going to write about a place where they don't live, they should get their facts right about that place. I live in Michigan and wouldn't, by any stretch of the imagination, consider Ann Arbor to be an overly conservative town; in fact it's among the more liberal areas in the state. However, I do realize that could be considered a subjective opinion, not to mention a matter of comparison, if one lives in New York City. However, there is nothing subjective about the fact that New York and Kalamazoo are, in fact, in the same time zone. This is not a huge deal, I know, but combined with the poor editing and a basically unlikeable protagonist, it made me unwilling to devote any more time to the book.

I listened to this story on CD instead of reading the book. Anna, the main character, was neurotic and at times quite boorish. I'm unsure why the author chose to make Anna almost ashamed of her gift as a medium. I would like to have had more background of how Anna came to discover her gift, how she found a tutor, and why she'd moved to New York. Instead, time is wasted with characters that could have been dropped from the book with zero negative effect on the story (e.g. Stacy, Anna's parents, Tommy, and the entire scene at the house up North that was for sale). I would have enjoyed learning more about Anna's brother and their interactions. I think Edward could have been a bit more interesting character, perhaps discussing more of his past and interactions with Anna's brother. I learned more about what was going on and what Edward was thinking by listening to the letters he wrote the couple that sponsored his life in the arts. I enjoyed those letters more than any other part of the story. As for recommending this book- as long as you aren't looking for substance or intrigue, Mozart's Ghost is an entertaining light lazy day read.