Customer Reviews

Subway Sonata

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This book has a real New York City feel. The author knows why artistic types are drawn to the city as a place to live and to be inspired by, and she knows the subway: who rides it, what it smells like, the noises it makes. The illustrator, too, "gets" the subway, the way people sit or stand, what they carry and wear. On the train, the riders' thoughts are in little balloons above their heads. I liked the juxtaposition of lofty thoughts, of a composer hearing sounds or an artist taken by a particular face, and mundane musings like, "I think I forgot to brush my teeth." The surprise of the book, for me, was the way the author brought the four disparate characters, an artist, a composer, a dancer and a writer, together at the end. The dancer goes to a concert and happens to hear the composer's new piece (Sonata for the Seventh Avenue IRT); the artist reads the writer's book to her daughter, etc. Only the reader knows these four were riding the subway together at the beginning of the book. This clever conceit makes New York seem like a small town, which in some ways it is.