The Sound of Blue [Hardcover]

Holly Payne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 2004

The mesmerizing tale of an American woman’s quest for healing in a land of refugees, from the critically acclaimed author of The Virgin’s Knot

Holly Payne’s debut novel illuminated the mystical journey of a famed rug weaver living in southwestern Turkey. Her latest storyline immerses us in an even more hypnotic set of circumstances, capturing another fascinating young woman’s crisis of faith in the Balkans.

Sara Foster has left America for the the adventure of a lifetime—teaching English to the sons and daughters of statesmen in Hungary—but her idyllic adventure instead reveals a dark world of pain and redemption when she ends up teaching in a refugee camp. Sara discovers that one of her students is a celebrated composer and soon finds herself crossing the border to his war-torn homeland, determined to exonerate him for the death of his brother. In a journey that takes her to Dubrovnik, a magnificent stone city on the Croatian Riviera, Sara contemplates her own identity, struggling to understand why the region’s ancient and extraordinary beauty belies a history of grief. As Sara unveils the secret of the composer’s escape, The Sound of Blue reveals poignant truths about the quests for refuge we all pursue. Bringing to life a world that readers seldom have the opportunity to see through characters of great depth, Holly Payne has once again created a triumph of the heart and soul.

Praise for The Virgin’s Knot:
“[To be] savored like the dark intensity of Turkish coffee.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“Creates an almost mystical tableau.” --San Jose Mercury News

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Payne's second novel (after 2002's well-received The Virgin's Knot) ruminates on refuge and how solace may be found in music and memory. In 1992, after getting rejected from Harvard Law School, Sara Foster flees to teach English in Hungary. She envisions a glamorous Budapest "where poets and politicians gobbled cakes and cobbled history, mixing ink with icing, calling it sweet," but instead finds herself giving lessons in optimism to Croatian refugees in Csokhid who have fled the "twentieth-century psoriasis" of war. Though used to solitude, Sara feels painfully disconnected; she finds comfort in the music of Milan, a Serbian composer who welcomes her attention ("The sound of blue had permitted perfect strangers to turn toward each other in one measured moment of refuge"). But when Milan returns to his native Dubrovnik to face his demons, Sara follows, to the war-torn city where a young half-Croatian, half-Serbian refugee named Luka searches for his drum, which will "wake the dead." Payne employs flourishes of figurative language and poetic musings on the nature of refuge and memory. But these exquisite (and sometimes overwritten) miniatures come at the expense of the bigger picture; the plot's clarity and momentum suffer, as do character development and the novel's real and dark context.
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From Booklist

Payne's haunting second novel, following The Virgin Knot (2002), takes place during the Balkan War in a Hungarian refugee camp housing 48,000 Croats. After failing to get into Harvard law school, Sara Foster intended to teach English abroad. Instead she ends up at the refugee camp, where she quickly becomes inextricably entangled in the anguished lives of her students. She knows her job is futile: the refugees are "only teetering on the edge of consciousness," never speaking of the past, for that would make it real. But Sara bonds with Elana, a widowed Croat nurse who has become separated from her nine-year-old son, who readers see scavenging for food and refusing to go to the orphanage. Running from her own demons, Sara is especially vulnerable to the heart-wrenching chaos surrounding her, echoing the words spoken on her arrival, "The minute you open your heart to a refugee, you suffer everything they have suffered." Against a background of stark wartime imagery, Payne laces her tale with poetic musings on the healing and redemptive power of love. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (December 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525947922
• ISBN-13: 978-0525947929
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,183,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soul-Searching Characters and Their Connectedness, February 1, 2005

By 

Sondra Miller "Sondra Miller" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sound of Blue (Hardcover)

The characters in Ms. Payne's second novel, The Sound of Blue, are more compelling and intriguing than her first book, The Virgin's Knot. She focuses on the sadness and connectedness between lost souls: people searching for parts of themselves that are repressed, lost or waiting to be discovered. Her strong use of description and metaphor helps the reader look inward and contemplate his/her own life's searches.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the wait, February 1, 2005

By 

Nathan D. Hulley (Kinshasa, Dem Rep of the Congo) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sound of Blue (Hardcover)

After reading The Virgin's Knot, I couldn't wait for Holly Payne's second book to arrive. In the beginning you can almost feel the puszta air around you as you get to know the main character Sara and Payne skillfully parallels the unknowns of the night in a turbulent place in time with the mysteries of Sara's past. The depth of description of towns in Croatia and Hungary brings you into a not-so-distant war that many people still struggle with, and Payne does a great job of exploring this through the characters. Perhaps the best aspect is the spirit of the Balkans, which you can feel throughout the novel. The only thing that could have made the book better would have been reading it sitting on the castle wall at Dubrovnik. Maybe next time around.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly Insightful and Accurate, March 25, 2005

By 

David Lynn (Bound Brook, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sound of Blue (Hardcover)

Having spent some time as a volunteer at refugee camp in Hungary, I was intrigued by Holly Payne's ability to articulate the emotions of those who have had to call these places home. Her words brought back memories of my own observations and interactions in a way that was amazingly insightful and accurate. I appreciate her efforts to bring depth and connection to the often anonymous faces that we see on TV and shed light on the deep contrast between the rich vibrant culture of the Balkans and the horrors that tore this region apart in the late twentieth century.