Customer Reviews

The Song of Names

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Martin Simmonds, the President ad Owner of Simmonds Ltd. (a music publishing company), has been asked to judge a music festival in the small town of Tawburn. He hears nothing remarkable until one young player - a violinist - plays a certain rubato, one that reminds Martin of the young man who stayed with his family in London, pre-WWII. The young man was a virtuoso, showing great promise but disappeared from Martin's family and from the world mysteriously, on the day of his debut performance.

What follows in Norman Lebrecht's "The Song of Names," is a story of remembrance and devotion. With that one rubato, Martin travels back in time, to when his father took in the promising young violinist, Dovidl Rapoport, while his father returned to Warsaw to protect his family. He remembers all the devotion the two shared and the pain that was caused to him and his family upon Dovidl's disappearance. The grown-up Martin begis a search for Dovidl, forcing both of them to face up to their pasts.

The characters are very well-defined and believable. Plus, Lebrecht's descriptions of life in pre-War London from a child's perspective are quite remarkable. You really feel as though you are biking through the streets with the two young boys or watching the Germans warplanes flying over London. He also gives the reader insight into the different sects of the Jewish community in both the past and the present.

Overall, I found this book to be quite an enjoyable read and recommend it highly.

I picked this book from a shelf of trade paperbacks at one of my favorite local independent bookstores, solely because of the title. On the back cover the blurb says, "Martin Simmonds' father tells him, 'Never trust a musician when he speaks about love.' The advice came too late." I was sold. And I was not disappointed. In fact, it has been a while since I enjoyed a book this much.

Martin Simmonds is the son of a man who ran a music promotion company that catered to the middleclass. In 1940s England, that was unique and probably considered quite low-brow. But the man was a master of PR and with this skill would take young hopeful classical musicians and build them a career of minor fame.

Just before Hitler invaded Poland, David Rapoport, a nine year old violin prodigy, is left by his father in the care of the Simmonds. The father went back to Poland and David never saw him or the rest of his family again. David is many things to the Simmonds family. To the father, he is the great future star who will make the company well thought of. So David is groomed and coddled, brought to the best teachers, given an almost priceless vintage violin. But to nine year old Martin, David is a brother, a companion, an idol, but most of all someone to love in a fairly loveless family.

They grow up together and David makes Martin come alive, gives him a personality and Martin feels loved in return. The book open 40 years after David disappeared on the night of his world debut. Martin is now an old hypocondriac and a broken spirit. He has taken over the family business, which has devolved into a shoddy, outdated sheet music company. On a business trip to the English hinterlands, Martin hears a young violinist with a bit of David's signature technique in his playing. So begins the search for David and the reader learns the backstory.

It is a wonderful book, written in a smart modern tone but full of history. During the Battle of Britain, you feel you are there with two nine year old boys, doing the paper route and exploring the bomb sites. The world of a training musician, of the single-minded competitive attitude necessary, of the maneuvering by the manager/promoter is all created. And the inner life of a boy growing to manhood in a foreign country with no news of his Jewish family in wartorn Poland is portrayed with reality and sensitivity.

But it is not a mawkish or heartwarming tale. It is full of human folly and unlovely emotions. The moment when the meaning of the title is revealed is so heartstopping that I had to put the book down for a while and digest it all. There is also humor, musical and religious philosophy and a good dose of mystery.

THE SONG OF NAMES won a Whitbread First Novel Award. Say what you will about awards, because if it hadn't won, I may never have come across the book.

This is an entertaining book, but not a literary giant, about boys in London during WWII. One is a violin prodigy, Jewish, who was brought to London from Poland just in time. The other is the son of the Jewish, musical, family with whom the prodigy lives. The middle chapters of the book are a flashback about the boys' lives together. I found the description of London during WWII bombings perfunctory and not convincing. I've read much better books about this time period. The boys were not believable characters.

However, the first few and last few chapters are about the boys as grown men. I enjoyed these and found the characters far more realistic. All of the book is told from the point of view of Martin, the London boy who hosts the prodigy.

The "song of names" refers to a song used to remember the names and dates of death of Jews who died in the Holocaust. I suppose this really did exist and that it was the inspiration around which this book was constructed. A lot of it, mostly the central part, has a reportorial feel. After all, the writer is a reporter. I didn't warm to any of the characters. The dialog throughout was more like people lecturing each other than really talking.

I thought the ending was funny and clever.

This is one of the best books I ever read and I am very much a senior citizen. I liked it so much that I bought it as a gift for family and friends and most of them shared my opinion. It is beautifully written, and the subject matter is most interesting.

Martin is an old man, looking toward retirement. His adulthood has been pretty dull; he took over his father's classical music promotion business, married a stable woman, had kids, and survived day to day. It could have been different, though. The problem was Dovidl.

Dovidl walked into Martin's life when they were both nine years old. Martin was living in upper-class comfort with his parents in England. Despite his family's money, his life was unhappy. His parents saw him as a nuisance and he was teased at school and bored at home. Then Dovidl and his father showed up on the doorstep. Dovidl was a violin prodigy and his family lived in Poland. However, this was in the nineteen-forties, and things were getting dangerous in Poland, especially for Jews like Dovidl's family. Martin's father agreed to take in the boy while Dovidl's father returned to retrieve the rest of the family.

Dovidl's father never returns; the entire family is murdered in a concentration camp. Martin and Dovidl, far from the tragedy, grow up like the closest of brothers. Dovidl has the raw talent, but he insists that he needs Martin to help guide him through his life and put his genius gift to work. Martin blossoms in his friend's presence, and Dovidl approaches his twenty-first birthday and his professional debut.

On the eve of his debut, Dovidl disappears. Martin's dreams of greatness disappear with him. Forty years later, though, Martin still hasn't given up on finding his friend. He is convinced that Dovidl is not dead, and is simply in hiding somewhere. On one of his travels, he hears something in a violinist--something hauntingly familiar and unique. Could this boy know Dovidl? Could he lead Martin toward unlocking the mystery that has taunted him for decades?

I really liked the mystery behind this story, and the flashback to the boys' childhood together. I got a real feel for what it would have been like living in England in wartime. I liked the ways Dovidl and Martin depended on each other and the things that each one brought to the relationship. I didn't particularly like Martin's character on its own, though. He was an unpleasant and petty child, who grew into a petty adult. He blamed Dovidl for all of his problems, instead of taking control of his own life. Spend forty years chasing after revenge just isn't an appealing character trait.

I picked this book up on a whim, and it was the best book I've read in a long time. Thoroughly enjoyed the author's ability to write a novel like it was indeed a song. Friendship and betrayal of the most heartwrenching kind. History of London was also woven into the story, gently to ground the reader and remind them of the realities of WWII.