Music of the Inner Lakes: Stories (MVP) [Paperback]

Roger Sheffer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1999 | Series: MVP (Book 89)

Set within music and choral singing, Sheffer's stories are filled with human frailty and gentle humor. Each story focuses, to one degree or another, on the elusiveness of perfection, the compromises that musicians must always make.

"Music of the Inner Lakes is a tightly knit but beautifully modulated collection of stories about the loss and recovery of music, a metaphor for aging and remembrance, death and rebirth. When the hand cannot play, when the voice cracks, when the choir begins to disintegrate, that is the exact moment Mr. Sheffer begins his deft exploration of one life's ending, another's turning toward new commitments and love."-Eugene Garber, author of Metaphysical Tales and The Historian: Six Fantasies of the American Experience

"The music here is the singing of the human spirit: most often a solitary voice, plaintive, urgent, heartbreaking-sometimes a little off-key, but no less compelling.... Occasionally, voices will blend into a perfect chord, even a perfect song, before the singers separate back into exile. 'I only want to sing beautiful music: says one. In this collection, Roger Sheffer does just that."-William Trowbridge, author of O Paradise

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Ten stories about the transcendence of music; the music of aging, death, and deliverance; the music of paths, rotten logs in the woods, icy lakes; music in the flesh; music as family history; music cellular and ultraviolet, glowing about the bonesmusic as the Oversoul. Within its chosen compass, Sheffers second collection (after (Borrowed Voices, 1990) strikes many different notes, often within a single tale. In Bald Soprano, for example, a chipper, song-loving, yet fading man of 74, who is losing his memory (he can barely remember five minutes past), dresses up in his dead wifes frayed skirt and goes to church on Halloween to play a joke on the choir singers gathered for Friday-evening rehearsal. They dont see him and leave, but he stays behind in a dimly lit pew talking with a bearded stranger he cant quite see, a stranger (Death?) who can sing two octaves below middle C in a bass so low it cant be heard. Where are the choir singers? the stranger asks. Theyre gone. They sang and theyre gone. Gone, as all singers must go. In the title tale, a man who has given up his guitar playing and songwriting after losing two fingertips is miraculously renewed when he hears a genetically twisted, nearly moronic backwoods family from the deepest hills sing some simpleminded throat clutchers that leave him struck with envy. He hikes out to visit them with a woman who lags behind him on the steep path. In her pale flat voice, she sang for a while, alone, and then with other voices. Or it may have been the wind accompanying her, blowing across the hard edges of a well-tuned forest. A yearning, lambent collectionand a balm to music lovers. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: New Rivers Press; 1st edition (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898231930
• ISBN-13: 978-0898231939
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,396,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a super book, January 23, 2000

By 

Gigi - See all my reviews

This review is from: Music of the Inner Lakes: Stories (MVP) (Paperback)

Roger Sheffer shows us that even the smallest moments are fraught with meaning. We run away from that idea, because to possess it makes us responsible for being fully alive and fully conscious each and every minute of each and every day. Sheffer isn't for the timid. But if you want to probe the Byzantine and unwritten rules behind most human behavior, listen to Sheffer's "music."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Voice, January 9, 2000

By 

Marianna Vieira - See all my reviews

This review is from: Music of the Inner Lakes: Stories (MVP) (Paperback)

Sheffer's newest book of short stories is told by a most unusual, original set of voices. The stories are entirely fresh insights into the human drives for connectedness and meaning; their characters are odd and fully fleshed out people who fit no established types. Sheffer's territory is untrammeled; he explores some most unattractive, unprepossessing characters as they insist on finding their place in their circumscribed worlds. It is a book about sounds and voices, and Sheffer's voice is a clear, sane and unequivocal one, free of self-consciousness or fear.

4.0 out of 5 stars good harmony, but still lacking a narrative drive, August 14, 2002

By 

"gardini23" (DeKalb, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Music of the Inner Lakes: Stories (MVP) (Paperback)

Roger Sheffer is an amazing writer, let me begin by saying that about him; however, there were times in this book where the harmonious relationship between music and life (and/or death) became too much of the story. I realize that Sheffer was going for something a bit different here: a themed collection on something that he obviously knows a lot about and that has obviously changed his life in a positive way. I applaud his effort, in fact so much so that I would never tell someone not to read this book. The stories are all fantastic revelations of the human spirit; and the prose, well the prose is beatiful. I could have given this book five stars for prose quality alone, but I felt that the narrative tension, the push and pull of characters that keeps so many readers glued to their seats, just wasn't as strong in Mr. Sheffer's collection as I had hoped it would be.
However, don't let that stop you. This is a great book. The stories all touch on humanity in a way that is special and unique, and Mr. Sheffer has earned a spot on my list of writers to reread for years to come. His characters are supurb, please don't let them suffer alone. Read about them, live with them, and then tell Mr. Sheffer that you too feel like music is the avenue to the soul. Thank you Mr. Sheffer for this wonderful book and I look forward to your future projects.