Piano Music for Four Hands is a novel about music and love set against three generations of French history. At its center is a charming but melancholy pianist named Michel Mailhoc. Having survived a series of bungled love affairs and professional disappointments, he retreats to his family house in the Pyrenees. The bright spot in his life is his grandniece Emma, who becomes his prizewinning student. Struggling with his fervent desire for her success and the fear of losing her, Michel sends Emma into the world of international musical stardom that he has renounced for himself. The Mailhoc family saga, stretching from World War I to the turbulent 1960s, is full of sorrow, but the underlying melody remains tender and humorous. From the first sentence we feel curiously at home in Roger Grenier's intimate, precise, and musical writing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Piano for Four Hands, a slim fiction by novelist and critic Roger Grenier, tells the story of aging, melancholy pianist Michel Mailhoc, who disdains worldly pleasures after a series of failed love affairs, and retreats to his family home in the Pyrenees. His only delight is his grand-niece, Emma, whom he trains to reap the accolades he scorned. Translated from the French by Alice Kaplan, a superb writer in her own right, the novel blossoms into delicate life, chronicling the illusions and disillusions of an existence devoted to art.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From Library Journal
Grenier, the author of over 30 books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Difficulty of Being a Dog (LJ 12/00), has spun a melancholy tale that captures the pathos of music but not its grandeur. Michel Mailhoc, descendant of the scorned Cagots (once treated as "untouchables") of southwestern France, is a talented pianist who studies as a child with the flamboyant and celebrated Nicolau Arderiu and then imitates his mentor by engaging in a trail of listless affairs and eventually withdrawing from the stage. He ends up teaching his grand-niece Emma, who goes on to become a famed concert pianist, though her success brings some pain for them both she is almost undone by stage fright, and he is saddened whenever she departs on tour. "Has his art of the piano been nothing but an instrument of seduction," muses Michel at one point, and the answer, alas, seems to be yes. Grenier writes in a dry, autumnal style that breathes the hopelessness of aborted love but not the passion that a single fine phrase of Beethoven can inspire. For comprehensive collections of French literature. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Partita,
This review is from: Piano Music for Four Hands (Paperback)
Partita"Partita" is the title of the French original. It is the life story of Michel Mailhoc who, at age five, became the student of the well-known pianist Nicolau Anderiu. The boy has great talent and grows up to be a very good pianist indeed. But life?s cards are stacked against him. His teacher leaves him, and Michel flounders. From important concerts he sinks to playing in a piano bar and finally gives up playing altogether. He now tries to compose, but cannot get it together. The many women in his life leave him because there is nothing to him beyond the piano. In his middle age, he becomes the tutor to his grand-niece Emma, also age five. She is a true genius and, as she grows up, easily outgrows him and leaves on her own career. He is now left behind, alone with his dog, in his old house. It is a somewhat sad and melancholy story, rather typical for a French writer and perhaps too slow and morose for our tastes.
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