THE PIANO MAN'S DAUGHTER [Hardcover]

Timothy Findley (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Toronto, HarperCollins (1995).; canadian first edition (1995)
• ASIN: B001KAJA4Q
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tribute to the song of life, July 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Piano Man's Daughter (Hardcover)

In this beautifully written and captivating novel, Canadian author, Timothy Findley, affirms that life is a magnificent and mysterious blending of our past, present and future. In fact, as Charlie, the narrator of the novel, discovers, the past teaches us how to live in the present and plan for the future. His mother, Lily, whose entrance into the world and whose place in the world are both unconventional, shares her wisdom with her son as they seek to discover the identity of Charlie's father. Although deemed mad by most of her socially conscious family and acquaintances, and often mistreated because of that, Charlie knows that despite her weaknesses, the wisdom Lily shares with him defies madness. The daughter of a piano man, Lily has a profound understanding of the meaning of music. She teaches her son that all living creatures share a song and that song must be passed on to others. "That song--those songs are just the same as what I was telling you about the ants. This is me, they say. This is you. This is us. All songs pass from one to another--the songs of ten thousand years of nesting together--of being one--of being us...We and the small stream burgeoning out of the storm and the stars above the field and the sky with its endless curving. Us. Us. Us, they said. We're singing. Us. This was my mother's teaching. I received it then--but I had no notion until her death of its potency. Pass it on, she had said. Pass it on." Only after his mother frees herself from the confines of a lunatic asylum and finally finds her ultimate safe place, does Charlie understand the importance of the song and the duty and privilege that is his to pass it on, despite the uncertainties and fears that often accompany the song. In The Piano Man's Daughter, Findley encourages all of us to listen carefully for the song of life, to appreciate all of the singers, and to lift our own voices as we pass on the hauntingly beautiful melody

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the mystery and dread of fatherhood, June 17, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The piano man's daughter (Hardcover)

The winner of numerous awards, Canadian author Findley shapes this 1996 novel around a young man's quest for his father and his dread of becoming a father himself.

Narrator Charlie Kilworth is the son of mad, beautiful, evervescent and tormented Lily Kilworth, who cannot or will not remember who Charlie's father is. It is her story Charlie tells, after her death in an asylum fire, a fire she may herself have set.

Lily's story begins before her birth, when her mother, Ede, meets an itinerant piano man. "The sight of him was like a match being struck," Ede recalls, beginning the incendiary allusions that punctuate the novel and haunt Lily's private world.

The piano man dies before he can wed Ede but eight years later she marries his brother, Frederick, an ambitious piano manufacturer whose one unorthodoxy is falling in love with Ede. He accepts Lily but without knowing of her affliction - severe epileptic seizures.

He is as repelled by Lily's epilepsy as Ede is frightened by it and becomes, for Lily, the demon of her childhood, the focus of rebellion and despair. But even though Frederick locks her in the attic whenever company is expected and finally banishes her to a school for difficult girls, Lily blossoms.

A beautiful, vibrant young woman, "hampered" not "handicapped" (the word makes her indignant) by her illness, she goes to England with a friend and it's there that Charlie is conceived. He knows only that the event occurred in January 1910 and he examines Lily's photos intently, imagining fathers, and questions her friends, adding pieces to the life she has already related to him.

Lily and Charlie return to Toronto before World War I but Frederick, outraged by Charlie's birth, refuses to see them. They begin a round of living in expensive hotels, going to dances where Charlie is always her partner, and seeing movies. For Charlie the life is a series of enchantments and nightmares as his mother's demons pursue her and drag him along. A child, he learns to watch over his mother although his dependency often renders him helpless.

When tragedy pushes Lily over the edge into madness, Charlie is liberated into normalcy - school, friends his own age, relatives. "It made a decent life - secure in ways I had never known." Lily emerges from the asylum but never permanently.

Charlie's voice is wistful, awed, admiring, impatient, petulant and wise. But it is Lily who colors and shapes the story, taking flight from her son's narration. Findley's writing is deeply atmosheric, enveloping the reader in the Canada of 1890 to 1920. He invites an intimacy with his characters (many not even touched on here) that creates a bond without violating their essential human secrecy.

A rewarding novel, which will linger in the mind.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting but lengthy, January 30, 2006

By 

N. Reilly "booklover" (Midwest) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Piano Man's Daughter (Paperback)

This writer is very adept at describing surroundings and different characters. I liked the story very much and yet I felt he left out key emotional responses to huge shifts in Lily's life. It is an interesting book and I was sad when it ended but I felt it would have been enhanced by more in-depth emotional descriptions.