The Piano Teacher [Mass Market Paperback]

Lynn York (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2004

Miss Wilma, the resident organist and piano teacher in the small Southern village of Swan's Knob has enough on her plate already, thank you very much, what with preparing the music for Lily Mae Strong's wedding extravaganza and fending off the pesterings of perennial bachelor Roy, who's got himself all worked up over plans for the July Fourth celebration that's months away.

But when her prodigal daughter Sarah returns with her young granddaughter Starling in tow, what can she do but enjoy the blessing of their unexpected visit? That is until Sarah's absentee husband Harper shows up on Miss Wilma's front porch a few short hours after a murder shakes the small community-and just two steps ahead of Jonah Branch, the longhaired stranger from Santa Fe who's become the number one suspect in the case. Suddenly, Miss Wilma's blessing begins to look more like a house full of trouble...

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

An easy journey into familiar territory: the small North Carolina town of Swan's Knob sometime in the late 1970s. Known as Miss Wilma, the gentle, upright piano teacher of the title keeps her life in order and finds comfort in it. She comes home after playing the organ for a wedding to find her daughter Sarah--thin, uncommunicative, and tense--on her doorstep with her granddaughter, Starling, but not with Starling's dad, Harper. York moves the point of view between Miss Wilma, Sarah, Harper, and Roy, the local distinguished gentleman who finds himself quite taken with Wilma, as all hell breaks loose. A handsome stranger comes looking for Sarah and is soon accused of murder. Harper's weaknesses are of the hippy-dippy kind but loathsome withal. Sarah doesn't get her mother's bone-deep kindness. Sad family stories leak out of direct, well-wrought prose. Romance, justice, and family win--probably. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

...pleasing and engaging...more than enough to keep a reader going... -- Winston-Salem Journal, March 28, 2004

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 293 pages
• Publisher: Plume; X edition (February 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452284775
• ISBN-13: 978-0452284777
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,769,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars blonde wigs, luv hut, and one dead squirrel, March 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Piano Teacher (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a great summer read that tricks you into thinking it is more obvious than it really is. Anyone with an appreciation of southern nuance will love this book. The little details creep up on you and then you suddenly realize it is rich in subliminal character and context. It is interesting to see that the writer really taps into relationships wraped around the concept of a murder mystery. It's fun and the first scene with the dead squirrel totally cracked me up.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine tuned, October 23, 2005

By 

Valerie R. Steele "V. Steele" (San Diego) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Piano Teacher (Mass Market Paperback)

The writing evokes such a strong sense of place, time and character. The story builds up without rush, layer by layer, befitting the slower-paced Southern atmosphere--while at the same time, the characters' sense of their lives possibly passing them by, is developed. Of course, music plays a part in this story about a piano teacher. Like anticipating a coming crescendo in an exciting new piece of music, the various layers of the story-telling come together beautifully and don't disappoint.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A sweet, quiet novel, September 21, 2004

By 

Debra Hamel (North Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Piano Teacher (Mass Market Paperback)

Fifty-something Wilma Mabry lives an ordered life--apron donned when preparing dinner, linen closet just so, and, always, the adoption of a supremely polite, even ostensibly indifferent exterior. This brand of southern gentility and a reliance on the comforts of routine have sustained Wilma--"Miss Wilma," the piano teacher of Lynn York's title--through marriage and motherhood and fifteen years of loneliness after her husband's suicide. But the price of maintaining equanimity has been a failure to communicate fully with the people closest to her. Wilma's relationship with her daughter Sarah, in particular, has suffered for it. During the course of the novel Wilma's ability to move through life seemingly unaffected is tested by a string of dramatic events: the unexpected attentions of a suitor, the murder of one of her Mayberry-sized town's policemen, and the unannounced appearance on her front porch of Wilma's troubled daughter and granddaughter.

Although its plot revolves in part around a nasty murder and its solution, Lynn York's The Piano Teacher is a sweet, quiet novel. In it the relationships between Wilma and Sarah, and between Sarah and her husband, are explored and, while we're watching, subtly altered. The characters--particularly that of Wilma--are well drawn, and life in a small community in which non-conformity is checked by the threat of scandal is nicely evoked. The book gets off to a slow start in its initial chapter, but readers who keep with the book will be rewarded.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece