Customer Reviews

Violin

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(43)
1 star:		(109)

 

 

In this pain-packed volume of beautifully expressed emotion, many demons are conquered -- the most infuriating of which is Stefan, a frustrated Stradivarius-obsessed ghost from long ago Austria, who haunts Triana, a newly widowed lover of classical music. Stefan uses Triana's painful past (a drunken mother, a negligent father, a broken marriage) and various losses (a daughter killed by cancer, a husband killed by AIDS, and a sister whose whereabouts are unknown) in an effort to justify his own sin of killing his father rather than relinquish his beloved Stradivarius.

Stefan tells Triana up front that he intends to drive her to madness. Using the misfortune in her life, he gives it a good effort; however, Triana proves herself stronger than he. Rather than harming her, Stefan helps Triana to heal, achieve and overcome.

Rice's beautiful writing is disruptive and confusing, and it should be. She is writing about hallucinations, conversations with a ghost, void of physical reality, but filled with the tone and fiber and emotion of dreams everyone experiences.

This is a unique book, the first by Anne Rice that I have read, and I believe a very under-appreciated book.

In my own never-to-be humble opion I beleive this to be Anne Rice's most authobiographical work thus far. It's apparent to me that Triana is in so many ways similar to Anne Rice. She describes herself for all practical purposes, right down to the bangs she has worn for as long as I've seen pictures of her. Even the way Triana dresses is Anne Rice right down to the long skirts of velvet. Of coarse the most poignant detail of the similarities is the daughter, dying of cancer with her angelic face puffy from chemotherapy and already having lost her beautiful blond curls gone before she was six years old. I think Triana was Anne's own voice regarding the horrible and unthinkable nature of burying your own baby. I really enjoyed this book obviously given the 'five stars'. I think Triana is a wonderful, human character which of coarse I was unaccustom to with Rice's work. It was lovely being able to aspire to her courage as she was 'just' a human, beautiful, scared, frail and strong all at the same time. She had her late husbands money to sheild her from the horrors of life whilst she suffered the fallout of having loved him and lost him. I didn't find it disturbing really at all her 'keeping' her Karl to herself for a few days after he passed on. In days of old, the family always prepared the corpse for burial, who else would be so loving and careful? It was disturbing, yes, but life's beautiful moments would be so much less so should we not have dark ones to balance them. The end of the book left me crying, as she helped yet another soul cross over, but this soul left her also with a beautiful gift. (I shall try not to give the end away, but suppose I already have, haven't I?) I don't envy her gifts as we are all blessed with our own and she certainly earned them all with her beloved service and devotion, this Triana... I loved her and will think of her as an 'old friend' along with Jane Eyre, Lastat, and so many others... Thanks Anne Rice for allowing us this peek into your mind and heart... I was reading this novel during the time of the horrible attack on the United States and it was a welcome reprieve when I simply couldn't take any more of the real horror coming out of my computer screen.

Few authors handle the English language as musically and rhythmically as Anne Rice; this book is a beautifully flowing wash of words. However, the book is also supremely and tiresomely self-indulgent.

In this book, Rice has committed an egregious offence popular to many amateur authors: she talks directly of raw emotions rather than showing them in the actions of the characters, or building them into the atmosphere of the scenes. Unlike most of Rice' other works, which are a more even (and effective) mix of plot and introspection, Violin is simply chock-full of endless internal ponderings on death and guilt.

We begin the book with the death of Triana's AIDS-ridden husband Karl. Triana falls into a trance of despair and denial, and spends a couple of days alone in the house with the corpse and memories of all those she has loved and lost. So far so good! But somewhere in this wallowing in thoughts of death, we lose Karl. He becomes nothing more than a vanished benefactor, who paved Triana's life with money.

And then comes her ghost. From the beginning, the ghost is ambiguous. Good or evil? Bringing pleasure or pain? And for what purpose? Eventually, Triana takes up the position that the ghost intended to drive her insane. But it seems more a rationalization than a truth.

The remainder of the tale has no internal logic. Triana and her ghost ramble about from century to century, palace to palace, luxury to luxury. Triana progresses from wealth to talent to renown, and on to an ultimate victory. Why? How has she earned this? Where is the conflict or sacrifice? Should Triana's obsessive and unjustified guilt for the deaths of her loved ones earn such rewards?

Sorry Anne, it doesn't work.

I have tried and tried to read this book. The first time, I made it only to page 14. Feeling that maybe it picked up after that, I gave it another chance and, after two weeks and sixty seven pages, I am crying uncle. I think that a book should pull you in - it should be read out of entertainment, not perserverence.

Rice is usually the very best when it comes to character development but her efforts here to pull you into the main character's madness results in pages and pages of ramblings from the character's mind about classical musicians and disjointed recollections of unintroduced and/or undeveloped characters. While she convinces you of the near madness of the character, she fails to begin to develop the plot. Each little thing that happens in the story - and there have been frustratingly few of those so far - sends the character into long departures from the story line. While other writers, like Gilman (The Yellow Wallpaper) have successfully used stream of consciousness writing to portray madness, Rice's tendency towards the inadvertant ramble makes this a inadvisable attempt on her part.

Plus, new characters keep being introduced so that it is difficult to keep the 'cast' straight in your head for the main character's coherent moments when it would be nice to remember, for example, which chaffeur had always been around and which was the new one. Vague references to her life before meeting her present late husband leave the reader reeling trying to figure out where the character has been, what happened, and which of the people she talks about are actually involved with the current story line. On average, I would say that there is about one paragraph of explanations to every two to three pages of ramblings.

Having faith in Rice, who is one of my favorite fictional authors, I wouldn't be surprised if the story eventually took hold and blossomed. But it will only be the determined reader and avid Rice fan that will make the effort to find out.

What a haunting and beautiful novel! I feel it's also a courageous one that deals with themes that cut close to the bone such as trauma, mourning and karmic responsibility. It also deals centrally with artistic inspiration, a theme that is deeply personal for many authors. This is one of Anne Rice's best books.

I'm not quite sure as to why many people hate this book. This is actually my first introduction to Anne Rice and I loved it! The book is able to evoke emotions that only music thus far has been able to do. Her dramatic use of language not only alerts the senses but also deepens the book as the reader gets to look inside the mind of the character. This book stands alone in its theme and the way it is written and that is good. As a musician I saw in her writing the emotions I felt when I play. I highly respect this work as a piece of fiction that is honest, from the heart, and extremely well-written. No one should shy away from this work. I highly recommend it to everyone who loves an emotional reading experience as well as an intellectual experience.

Wow, I am one of a few here who really liked this book by Rice. I found that it had depth-- you could almost taste the main characters greif in this story and also the passion that the ghost in the story has for the violin and music. I did not have a problem maintaining interest in this book from start to finish. It may be my second favorite Rice book. :)

This novel is stunning and difficult to put down. Once I got into the story, I could almost hear the violin music she was describing. Very inspiring and surprisingly uplifting.

Just as the title suggests, this book really was a wonderful read. I have read nearly everything by Mrs. Rice and this is in my top 5 of her works. The character of Stefan was just so decadently tragic. His tale was something I wanted to desperately to relate to yet I found myself closer to Triana because of the swooning madness and her neverending love for her husband, his work on St. Sebastion, and the music of Beethoven. I have a strong love for the violin; it's voice, it's passion screams out like no other instrument in mortal hands or lips. And this story did such justice to the violin. The story reads like a beautifully worded poem that you cannot help but pray it won't end. It is indeed a tragic tale. Sometimes, I feel like Triana when she stole away the violin from Stefan, and I want to play the way she did purely from the heart. You can hear every note when she plays upon the stage. Anyone who gives this book fewer stars has not read deeply enough (or even finished it for that matter) to critique it to its complete worthiness. If you have a passion for the violin, love a good yet tragic and always beautiful story about mysterious circumstances, daydreaming, undying love, and the pain of ascent and descension, then this is the book for you. I would also recommend "Cry to Heaven" by Mrs. Rice. Please please pick up these two books. And finish them. I promise you will learn something more than what you read on the printed pages. Thank you, Mrs. Rice, for sharing your gift with the world.

I've enjoyed some of Anne Rice's previous books while I found others too confusing and ill-plotted with too many extraneous characters thrown in just to keep the story boiling. While Violin is as dark and lush as her previous work (the prose itself is gorgeous), I think it's probably Rice's worst. It begins hauntingly enough: the heroine cannot force herself to stop sleeping with her dead husband's rotting corpse, lest she lose the memory of him altogether. From this intriguing beginning, the waters grow ever muddier. The plot begins to meander and the characters' motivations become less and less clear. It finally became a chore just to turn the pages. What promised to be a dark, lush mood piece evolved into nothing more than a jumbled stream-of-consciousness with a very unsatisfying ending. Of course, the similarities between the main character and Rice, herself, cannot be overlooked. Anne Rice is usually too "dark" for my taste, but she IS an immensely talented writer when she sticks to her plot thread. If Stephen King is the Master of Horror (and he is), and Mary Higgins Clark the Master of Suspense, then Anne Rice has certainly earned the title Master of Darkness. Please, Ms. Rice, sit down and plot a new vampire tale, then let your imagination go to work. I'm sure you'll find yourself back on top of the bestseller list again!