Rose Variations [Hardcover]

Marisha Chamberlain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2009

Advance Praise for The Rose Variations:

“The Rose Variations is an elegant symphony of a novel, shaped by a lovely complexity, informed by humor and grace. Congratulations to Marisha Chamberlain for her fine debut.”—Roxana Robinson, author of Cost

 

“In this richly absorbing novel Chamberlain creates a heroine so vivid, so complex, so passionate that she walks right off the page and into the reader's mind and heart. I loved following Rose through her various vicissitudes, romantic and musical, and through her many relationships with friends, colleagues, students and lovers. The Rose Variations is one of those rare novels that captures the complexity of a life lived over time, and does so in beautiful, eloquent prose. A brilliant debut.”—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

 

“Rose MacGregor is my kind of heroine—funny and serious, dreamy but brutally practical when it’s called for; someone blissfully inconsistent—like the rest of us. What more can one ask than that a novel presents us with a unique personality such as Rose’s?”—Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People

 

“Who’d have thought it possible? There’s news about love and work in Marisha Chamberlain’s The Rose Variations! It’d be hard to find a more contemporary view of the sexual dilemma, but I couldn’t help thinking how much Shakespeare, Mozart, and Jane Austen would have savored this novel.”—David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years and La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl

In 1975, twenty-five-year-old Rose MacGregor moves to St. Paul, Minnesota, with nothing but a few books, her cello, and a temporary professorship at a Midwestern college. The only woman in the music department, the other professors refer to her derisively as “the Girl Composer,” but she believes that a brilliant career writing music lies ahead.

Passionately focused on her art, she also longs to find love, but her fierce independence always seems to get in the way of romantic relationships. Struggling with loneliness and ambition, she gets tangled up with a gay colleague, a self-made stonemason, a lesbian cellist, and the troubles of her wayward younger sister, before finally finding happiness.

Marisha Chamberlain is a playwright, poet, fiction writer, essayist, and screenwriter. Her book of poems, Powers, won a Minnesota Voices Award. She lives in Hastings, Minnesota. This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her first novel, poet and playwright Chamberlain tells the vibrant story of Rose McGregor, a talented composer navigating academia in the early days of feminism. A temporary appointment as the token “Girl Composer” at a Minnesota college puts 25-year-old Rose on her own for the first time; the older of two New Hampshire sisters, Rose has always been the plain, responsible one, caretaker to sister Natalie, but finds her professional and personal lives blooming in the cold weather of St. Paul. She falls in love with Guy, a stonemason who wants to whisk her off to his farm, but the affair falls apart. From there, Rose joins eccentric cellist Lila Goldensohn, who has turned her country home into an all-female retreat. Living off the land without the distraction of love, Rose returns to composing until Natalie unexpectedly arrives, pregnant and in distress, to overtake Rose’s life again. Following Rose’s music career to the city, the West Coast and back again, Chamberlain makes a charming, quirky fugue of Rose’s pursuit of love, independence and success.
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From Booklist

Rose MacGregor, 25 years old and fresh out of graduate school in the mid-1970s, takes a temporary position as a professor in the music department at a college in St. Paul, intending to develop her skills as a composer. Headstrong yet introspective, Rose quickly becomes friends with Francis, the mousy music department secretary, and Alan, a handsome fellow professor, both of whom teach her, in their unique way, the lifestyle of academe. Soon thereafter, Rose falls into a passionate, sensual relationship with the older, pensive Guy Robbins. When the liaison with Guy crumbles, however, Rose flees from the university to an isolated farm headed by a reclusive female composer, Lila. Rose is soon joined by her younger sister Natalie, nine months pregnant and unwieldy. Upon the birth of Natalie’s daughter, Meggy, Rose’s life becomes a complex, unpredictable braid of familial, sexual, and professional relationships. Told in two parts, the narrative’s measured pace allows the reader to linger as Rose comes into her own as a composer, lover, and independent woman. --Leah Strauss

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; First Edition edition (February 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569475385
• ISBN-13: 978-1569475386
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,723,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable Rose MacGregor, February 8, 2009

By 

Margaret Hasse "poet" (Saint Paul, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rose Variations (Hardcover)

In THE ROSE VARIATIONS, a young woman named Rose MacGregor, just out of graduate school, arrives in a new city to assume her first real job and to look for love in all the right and wrong places. Freud famously asserted that "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness." As Rose explores her creativity, sexuality, relationships with other women, and ambivalence about commitment, her story grows more lively, complex, and surprising. Rose -- passionate, talented, strong-willed, and big-hearted -- strides through the pages of the book and into the pantheon of fiction's remarkable characters. The author's skill as poet is evident in the novel's beautiful language, just as her background as a playwright is shown in the vitality of the dialogue.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable in an unexpected way..., June 18, 2009

By 

Jennifer Allison (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rose Variations (Hardcover)

This book is more a character study of someone who happens to be a music professor and composer, and much of the narrative covers her life away from the classroom. This was a bit of a disappointment to me, because my interest in that aspect of the character was one of the main reasons I bought the book. But I still enjoyed it. There were a lot of quirky characters whose motivation for acting was not always clear, and it was fun for me to try to get inside their heads as I was reading. I probably would not have made a lot of the choices that Rose made. But that doesn't mean her life didn't hold any interest for me.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rose Variations, January 28, 2009

By 

Lesley Atwood - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rose Variations (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful novel. The characters are complex and quirky. The story drew me in and it was difficult to put down. As a young woman growing up in the 70's, Rose's coming of age and difficulties as the sole woman in the music department really resonated with me. However, I know my daughter and son will enjoy this novel as much as I did. Lesley