While the Music Lasts [Hardcover]

Alice McVeigh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1995

This novel opens up the life of an orchestra in all its stressful, raw detail. Between recording sessions, foreign tours and concerts, the musical and personal tensions between the orchestra members revolve and resolve.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Romance and sex preoccupy the members of the Orchestra of London in McVeigh's captivating, witty debut novel about musicians loving, infighting and jockeying for position. Her protagonist-vibrant, moody, insecure viola player Isabel Bonner, who's in her 30s-drifts from lover to lover until she becomes infatuated with a considerably older and married cellist. While the pair's tortured affair plays out, leading Isabel to drugs and alcohol, other liaisons bloom or wilt. Elinor Jay, heiress and obsessive concertgoer, falls for an arrogant Israeli cellist who swears by his psychic Tarot card reader. Rough-and-ready Australian horn player Mirabel Felton is raped by the orchestra's conductor; she dies, willing her money to her passionate friend Elaine Brown with the proviso that Elaine use the legacy to leave her dominating husband. Meanwhile, an irreverent, misogynist, homosexual cellist is devastated to learn that an ex-lover has AIDS. Writing through a variety of narrative voices, McVeigh offers uncanny insights into music, love and the human heart. Though her characters sometimes border on stereotypes, her portrayal of the psychosexual duet between men and women, and of the music-making process in a symphony orchestra, sings with lyrical intensity and eloquent feeling.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857979397
• ISBN-13: 978-1857979398
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,810,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wondrously insightful, August 12, 2004

By 

kellytwo "kellytwo" (cleveland hts, ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: While the Music Lasts (Hardcover)

It just so happens this book is about the individual members of a large symphony orchestra. Truly, however, the personality types involved could easily be found in any tightly-knit group of folks who spend inordinate amounts of time together in an enclosed space, or who frequently travel together. It could perhaps be about an athletic team, although, of course, there are few of them which are co-ed. (But then, of course, neither is the Vienna Philharmonic!)

There are 105 musicians in a standard large orchestra, and the same types play over and over and over again, regardless of location. Anyone who has ever studied music and played in an orchestra (or even a large concert band) will readily recognize each of these characters, although they will be known by different names.

Ms. McVeigh is not only a symphonic caliber cellist, but also a gifted writer possessed of absolutely wicked insight, not to mention humor, perception, sensibility and grace. She uses her musical skills to great advantage, as well, while juggling the lives and tales of her principal players, conductors and the other persons who occasionally wander through the story.

The main theme belongs to Isabel and William, who cannot be together, but neither can they be apart, a situation altogether too common in every day life. Their tale, and all the others, are variously told in flashback, as narrative or diary entries, blended together into twelve-part harmony, with only slight dissonances here and there.

What lover hasn't thought as Isabel does when she says about William, for instance: `If love was a foreign country, let him be my interpreter...' This is a marvelous book about people; witty, perceptive and well-written--vastly enjoyable on many levels. One doesn't have to be a musician to appreciate its depths.