Customer Reviews

The Wonder Singer

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Mark Lockwood is a hack. He's a writer without pretension, happy to make a living. But now he's somehow landed the writing job of all time--ghostwriter of the autobiography of legendary opera diva Merce Casals. Suddenly he has a real investment in his work.

The story of Senora Casals life and career is a major thread throughout the novel. As she relays the triumphs and tragedies of her life, Mark develops a genuine affection for the sometimes difficult lady. And, bored in his marriage, he holds an affection of a different sort for her attractive nurse, Perla. All is going well with the project until La Casals up and dies on them.

Suddenly, her biography is a hot property. Lockwood's manager wants to reassign the book to a more high profile biographer, and he wants Lockwood to surrender the recordings he and Casals made together. It is at this point that the novel veers off into what might be considered farcical territory, with an oversized drag queen added to the troupe of biographers on the run.

The story is interesting on multiple levels--first, simply for the grand operatic background. And George Rabasa has created a memorable tribe of characters that stick with the reader for some time. However, it was here that Rabasa and I ran into trouble. I continually got caught up in the action of The Wonder Singer, and time and time again it became obvious to me that the author was writing a novel about character, not plot. He hammered it home: character, not plot. And if you read the novel with that in mind, you'll be satisfied. Silly thing that I am, I kept getting distracted by the plot, which led to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

George Rabasa's The Wonder Singer easily captures the imagination through deftly orchestrated prose and detailed description. The Wonder Singer is the story of famed opera singer Merce Casals, and her story as told to her ghostwriter Mark Lockwood. Through alternating chapters between the biography of Merce Casals and Mark Lockwood's musings and reviews of his interview tapes with Casals, her tragic and dramatic story unfolds like Aida or many of the other great operas she sang.

"There are moments when the order of life collapses in midbreath, when a missed heartbeat brings on an earthquake. At such a moment, this story takes an unexpected turn." (Page 1 of hardcover)

How can readers ignore the first, foreboding line of this novel? The Wonder Singer is more than a story of a famed opera singer, but the story of a ghostwriter who blossoms into his own when faced with giving up his dream job or plunging into the unknown. Lockwood teams up with the Casals' former caretaker Perla, who Lockwood fantasizes about having a torrid affair with, and Casals' self-proclaimed number one fan Orson La Prima, who dresses in drag to impersonate his favorite opera star. They are going to write Casals' story and celebrate her life against the wishes of her agent, Hollywood Hank.

Rabasa's prose is lyrical, enchanting, and absorbing, drawing readers into the vivid scenes full of emotion. The Wonder Singer is a character-driven novel examining the impact of early abandonment by a father on a gifted, young singer, her triumph as an opera star, and the drive and fear writers feel when they are faced with a project they would do almost anything to complete even if they feel outmatched and inexperienced.

Mark Lockwood, an author popularly known for his writings on how to talk to teens about a number of real life issues, has been assigned the task of acting as ghostwriter to pen and publish the biography of opera diva Mercè Casals. Hours are spent listening to her talk of her life, which is daunting in and of itself, until one day Senorita Casals dies in the bathtub with the project unfinished. With a high profile book in the works, Mark's agent Hollywood Hank now wants to assign the book to a more well-known author. Only Mark is committed to the project and not willing to give up his hours of tapes despite their harassment and snooping. As Mark sees it, the book is his to write, the words entrusted to him by Senorita Casals and no one else. At the risk of his health, his sanity, and his marriage, Mark must write this book. It is a race against time to finish his book before Hollywood Hank and his new star author finish theirs.

With the help of Senorita Casals' former nurse Perla, drag Queen and Casals' number one fan Orson, and Senorita Casals' husband Nolan, Mark protects his tapes and writes his book, becoming increasingly invested in not only the book but the life of the diva herself. The connection he has with Senorita Casals and her words is an intimate one. It almost seemed to me as if he were falling in a sort of platonic love with Mercè, or becoming obsessed with her life and her words. Maybe the obsession was in the book and his love for her made him love her story, but he definitely connected with the book on a very personal level.

The book weaves two stories in one: Mark's journey through his book writing and Senorita Casals personal story. Injected here and there are `snippets' from the autobiographical work by Mark. We learn of Mercè's childhood, her abandonment by her father, her life as a rising star, her marriage, her marriage troubles, and all of her career difficulties. Through these snippets, we are better able to understand Mercè and her complicated life. She becomes less a diva and more a real person who experiences pain and conflict. It is often times hard to see `privileged' people as anything but glitz and glamour, but such is far from the truth in the case of Mercè. The strength that Mercè displays throughout her life is truly impressive and inspiring.

Of course, I wish that Mark had developed more as a character-- rather, grew in his own maturity, not developed in a writing sense. He never really seems to take responsibility for what he is doing wrong to other people, namely his wife. It was sad to me to see that though he wishes to resolve this, he never really expresses regret until the end. Throughout the book, as he apologizes to his wife and says he loves her, he is still lusting after the nurse without the slightest hint of shame. I have to say, I quite disliked him for this, but his character was human enough in every regard that I found myself also sympathizing with him. I think this is a testament to Rabasa's writing style and talent that he can make a character that anyone can sympathize with and understand even when he does things that are upsetting.

My favorite parts were the parts of Mercè Casals life. I wish that there really was a biography about her out! She told a lot of very interesting and emotional stories. Mr. Rabasa created a fascinating character when he created her. I found myself enamored with her and excusing everything she did wrong, which I guess makes me a lot like Mark.

The entire story is told in a smooth, sophisticated tone. Rabasa is an impeccable writer with a talent for making characters that are believable and complicated. The all too human experiences endured by the characters give the story a sublime and impossible to escape from charm. Arias rise and fall, suffused with a catalog of emotions, which capture the heart. This is, of course, the life of Mercè Casals-- a grand aria told in spoken language.

George Rabasha has truly created a beautifully-written, engaging novel that is rich with emotion. It tells the story of legendary opera singer Merce Casals and author Mark Lockwood, who has been hired to ghostwrite her autobiography. As the great diva divulges her achievements and adversities, during 500 hours of taped interviews, Mark develops a heartfelt affection for her. Following her sudden death, her agent wants a 'famous author' to write her memoir. Obsessed with his project, Mark refuses to give his tapes and notes to the replacement author. His deep desire is to produce the authoritative memoir...to re-create the story Merce shared with him, in her own words. Therefore, Mark joins up with her nurse, her number-one fan and her husband, to lovingly write Merce's story as a way to celebrate her life. Mr. Rabasha brilliantly alternated the chapters between Merce's life story and Mark's manic process of documenting it, drawing me deeper into this captivating story. Also, he did a magnificent job crafting these charming, unique characters. Merce's history, especially her Spanish Civil War memories were extremely fascinating. Through it all, she demonstrated courage and a strength that is admirable and inspiring. I absolutely LOVED this amazing page-turner, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK!!

Mark Lockwood is a hack, a writer-for-hire whose bread and butter so far has been a series of How to Talk To Your Teen About... books. So when he takes on ghostwriting the autobiography of aging opera diva Mercè Casals, he finds himself entranced by her free spirit and her stories. It doesn't hurt that "La Casals" employs an attractive, no-nonsense day nurse named Perla, who tolerates his flirting in between caring for her charge and sneaking out for smoke breaks. He spends his days in the Señora's apartment, learning to appreciate opera and recording 500 hours of interviews, somewhat at the expense of his marriage to Claire, which was already suffering.

But one morning, Perla urgently calls him into Casals's bathroom. "In the dim light, in the steamy warm air, in the scent of the orchids and the ferns and the snaking tendrils of ivy and clematis and jasmine, Lockwood hears himself think: My diva is dead." Soon his agent, Hollywood Hank, is hounding Lockwood for the tapes. Now that Casals has died, he wants to replace Lockwood with a different hack --- a famous one. And when he spies Alonzo Baylor at the funeral, his worst suspicions are confirmed: "Baylor makes literature look easy, as one terse sentence inevitably builds on another. He has time to write books and to pal around with film stars, prizefighters, beach bunnies, and ex-convicts."

Lockwood, somewhat to his own surprise, digs in his heels. He jealously guards the tapes and plunges into finishing The Wonder Singer, a book that will not only beat Baylor to the punch, but also do justice to the story of the eccentric diva that has opened up his own life. George Rabasa's novel is the story of Lockwood's struggle with this book, interspersed with chapters of the actual book he is writing, in Casals's own (we presume edited) words. Beginning with an early abandonment by her father, a tutelage of "the voice" under a father figure, teenage adventures in the Barcelona of the Spanish Civil War, her life unfolds with stories of the men and opera roles she has known throughout a long and colorful career.

Case in point. She is married to tenor Nolan Keefe, but a certain prince is wooing her. His amorous gift? Two peacocks let loose on stage. Casals relates the tale in one of her chapters: "The magnificent birds strutted in as I was rising from a languid curtsy." (Illustrating one problem of the ghostwriter: can we imagine someone describing her own curtsy as languid?) Back in the hotel room with her husband, the birds trash the room when the couple begins to get "intimate."

THE WONDER SINGER presents many colorful threads that are never resolved. How does the completed book do in the wide world? Does it beat out Baylor's version? Do Claire and Lockwood reconcile? How is Lockwood changed by persevering with The Wonder Singer? Certainly this book contains all the exotic images and lurid stories that one might expect from a novel about an opera diva. As it zigzagged back and forth between chapters of The Wonder Singer and details of Lockwood writing the autobiography (pizza boxes piling up and overflowing ashtrays, odd alliances, Claire leaving), I couldn't help wishing for a tidy bow in at least a couple of the loose ends. But perhaps the unanswered questions lend staying power to the vivid scenes of this book, like a few tantalizing secrets keep a great singer's reputation alive long after she leaves the stage.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

According to writer Mark Lockwood, there's no shame in being called a hack, a hired gun. They get the job done, he says. But his ability to churn out product is not what drives world-renowned opera singer Merce Casals to choose him as the ghostwriter of her memoirs. "He listens," she explains simply. And in George Rabasa's The Wonder Singer, Lockwood does listen, intently at first, to the diva weave her tale. But when his elderly muse dies suddenly, Lockwood becomes obsessed with listening to their recorded interviews night and day in an effort to finish her memoirs and do justice to her life story.

Lockwood is not the only one vying to tell the diva's story, though. A top publishing agent and a famous author are on Lockwood's tail, aiming to retrieve the tapes and notes. This literary tug-of-war provides for some comical scenes as the writers try to outdo each other in digging for answers and mining Casals' contacts and relations (in one scene, Lockwood's rival even plucks some hair from the singer while she lies at rest in her coffin...later he submits it for DNA analysis, hoping it will offer an interesting twist to his manuscript).

Joining Lockwood in his race to finish the book are Casals' former nurse, Perla, and a scarily-accurate Casals imitator named Orson. Casals husband, Nolan - placed in an assisted care facility by Merce years ago - even joins in on the caper. Not everyone is willing to play Lockwood's game, though. His wife, Claire, grows impatient with his obsession and his resulting distance from her (made only wider by Lockwood's foolish flirtations with Perla).

My favorite part of The Wonder Singer was how well the author brought his characters to life. I could hear them, I could see them, I believed them. That doesn't mean I always liked them, which is even more impressive that the author made me care. I didn't like that none of the married characters seemed capable of being 100% loyal to their spouses. I was annoyed at how Lockwood became increasingly pathetic in his obsession with writing Casals' story. Perla seemed like a tease and a mooch. Orson was just...well...there for the ride, I guess. Nolan was hornery, though charming. And Casals herself could certainly behave like the diva everyone assumed she was. BUT...I still cared about each of them. I enjoyed them through all their flaws and foibles.

I also think author Rabasa did a fantastic job knitting Casals memoirs - the story within the story here, the real "Wonder Singer" - into Lockwood's adventure. The sincerity of her life history helped to balance the off-kilter endeavors of Lockwood to bring her story to the people.

The Wonder Singer was unlike anything I had read recently, and I really enjoyed the trip.

Thank you, thank you to Caitlin at Unbridled Books for this review copy!

In the Wonder Singer the contemporary and the historical merge to produce a tale of two struggling artists - a writer and an opera singer, both born in different times and places, but who both share a common capacity for love and for passion. Mark Lockwood, in his "rumpled khakis and pocket t-shirt," decides that he will pursue the biography of grand dame Merce Casals even after the eighty-year-old dies in her favorite bathroom. A legendary singer that had a deep sense of her place in history, Merce has led a colorful life plagued by near misses and blown opportunities, where even when an unhappy end seemed near and inevitable, great fame and fortune was ultimately achieved.

With her tomato-red hair, all the time sitting smug and queenly staring at her ghostwriter with a mix of suspicion and amusement, Merce fanatically dictates to Lockwood her story, aiming to "flush the rats from her past." An artist, but also an insufferable egoist, for Merce, singing was a almost spiritual act. But as Merce's words flutter around Mark, he begins to listen to her voice from deep inside him, her life becoming his life. It's as though she had died before her time, and left it up to him to deal with her unresolved business, especially that of her "small guilts and her fierce grudges."

It is at the singer's apartment that Mark meets Perla, Merce's maid, who after 18 months of service to the Senora has finally had her charge lifted off her hands. The attraction to Perla is instant, her charming ways providing a stark antithesis to life with his wife Claire who admits that she liked him better before he became obsessed with his muse. Claire is even suspicious that her husband has actually fallen in love, not just with Merce, but also with Perla. Its as though he's in the presence of a dark angel angling for nurse duty in the afterlife: "To have both the Senora's story and the girl is the height of good fortune."

Lockwood is in danger of being exploited, even sidelined by his own agent who has begun to push him off the project, smuggling in a famous writer under an alias, and stopping at nothing to get to Merce's precious tapes and memorabilia, the ultimate keys to her fractured life. It is through these tapes that Merce's tumultuous life is revealed, along with her carefully hidden secrets, the memories that keep her tethered to earth for ever. Growing up in Spain, she was abandoned by her father after a card game then adopted by the shady impresario Pep Saval in a humble inn in an out of the way village; and then thrust into the terrible violence in Barcelona, the acts of atrocity committed and the realization that she's not about to let war ruin her life; and then her great love, her husband Nolan Keefe with his letters full of vague hopes and the reckless promise to send her steamer passage so she can join him in New York.

Mark's own struggles as a writer, his failing marriage and his growing obsession with Perla are interlocked with Merce's colorful life and her eventual rise to world-wide fame, singer for kings and princes and heads of state. Ultimately a story about the price that is paid for artistic freedom, Merce might at first appear as a victim when she's not playing the role of the guileful seducer in an existence that is punctuated by men as heroes and villains where she's always abandoned by them and then ironically owned by them. No doubt men had taught her to sing, yet they'd also manipulated, stifled, adored and exploited her.

Rabasa writes beautifully about his characters' sorrows and heartaches as both Lockwood Merce - and later, Nolan - confess their deepest insecurities and how they profited from their dreams. Although the novel is a bit over-long, Rabasa's liquidity prose imbues his novel with the language of loss and a type of despondent beauty as Merce faces her ultimate test and her inevitable decline with grace, pain, and with equanimity. As heartache giving away to emptiness, Lockwood comes across as an earnestly elegiac misfit, a musical desperado, who mirrors Merce's own ego, turning the fine emotion of love into a creaking, painful exercise of will. Mike Leonard September 08.

The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa is the mesmerizing tale of a writer who becomes so obsessed with the object of the biography he's ghostwriting, he loses his wife and his sanity. Mark Lockwood has been hired to write the biography of famed opera soprano Merce Casals. This is a step up from the nihilistic series How to Talk to Your Teen he's been writing, as well as freelancing brochures and ads for anyone who comes up with the cash. Mark sits with the diva for six hours a day recording the stories of her life and immersing himself in her memories, until the day Merce's nurse, Perla, finds her dead in the bathtub. Now the demand for Casal's story has skyrocketed, and a high profile Hollywood writer has been hired to write it. Mark's tapes are of value; Mark himself is not. So Mark absconds with the tapes and hides out with Perla and a Merce fan named Oscar who dresses in drag and lipsynchs to the diva's recordings. Throw in Merce's husband Nolan who was banished from her life to a retirement home, and the story is quirky in all the right ways. The story flips between the tale of Mark's quest for this story and his actual telling of Merce's life. Rabasa has a talent for writing beautifully, poignant passages: In the end the voice does what it wants. It's never hungry or thirsty, hot or cold, never sad or angry, guilty or innocent. It doesn't shop or gossip or tingle to another's touch. It just is what is wants to be. In the end of Merce's long and eventful life, she sought only to be happy within herself, and that is the lesson that she imparts to Mark and the reader as well. Lyrical and funny, this is the perfect book for a rainy, fall day.

Eccentrics are created by environment and education, very similar to the formation of an Intelligence Quotient. George Rabasa's The Wonder Singer is an exploration of the life in the development of a diva. The glimpse into her discovery, training, and childhood as told by her to the 'scribbler' Mark Lockwood is an in depth analysis of how people get to be who they are. As a retired artiste, the diva, now in her later years, listens to her operatic recordings and reminisces on how life used to be as she tells her story to a tape recorder. Sadly, she tells of being abandoned by her father, after he lost her in a poker game! Fortune had come her way and the peacock which graces the cover the book had been one of two which she had kept as pets.

Merce Casals is recorded by Lockwood on hundreds of cassettes as they met daily to develop an autobiography intended to tell the world about her 80 plus years of accomplishments as an opera star. Then, as they come near the finale of her story, she dies in her bath! A mad scramble ensues as Perla the nurse and Mark the 'scribbler' evade a renowned celebrity biographer so they can bring their own book to the public based upon the tapes, first. While this madcap adventure unfolds, enters Nolan Keefe, the diva's husband, who Mark and Perla take under their wings to rescue from a retirement home. Mix into this kettle a female impersonator, who professes to be the diva's greatest fan. Thus, evolves a novel which is fun, serious, and akin to a comic opera!

A wonder of a book within a book; this saga of the writer and his subject tells the story through the eyes of the diva before she became famous. After her recognition as a truly great star, she tells of the many appearances and acclaim she has received throughout her career. Fame which fades and also that which is anticipated by the 'scribbler', are the elements which make this a wonderful read and one worth your time. The Wonder Singer is highly recommended and is another accomplishment of George Rabasa who wrote award winning Floating Kingdom and The Cleansing.

Clark Isaacs
Reviewer

Forty-year-old Mark Lockwood has been commissioned to ghostwrite the autobiography of Senora Mercè Casals, diva. For six hours a day he and the Senora, once the world's greatest soprano, talk--she reliving her roles as Norma and Aida and Violetta. She relives the rest of her life as well, singing on her father's cue in bars and hostels, the stranger her father handed her off to, the Spanish Civil War, the men in her life who claimed her and used her and loved her. But after 500 hours of conversation recorded on the precarious snakes of tape spooled in a suitcase's worth of cassettes, Lockwood's diva up and dies, her 80-something body floating "pale, blubberous and opalescent in her bath." The fate of Lockwood's book, given her death, is now up in the air. Lockwood was the right man for the job while the Senora was alive, but with her death his agent wants a bigger name, a bestselling author, someone who can churn out a doorstep-sized biography that will grace the supermarket aisles. He's ready to ditch Lockwood with a fat kill fee. But Lockwood has the tapes, without which the book project--like the diva herself--is pretty much dead in the water. Now obsessed with the diva and with his book, Lockwood grabs the tapes and runs.

In The Wonder Singer Rabasa tells the intertwined stories of Lockwood and Senora Casals, his narrative slipping back and forth from what's going on in the narrative present to Lockwood's interviews with the dival to chapters taken from the manuscript he's writing. He's working feverishly, writing 8-12 hours a day and listening to the tapes even while he sleeps, ignoring phone calls and running from his agent's goons, destroying his marriage. But mostly Rabasa's story is about the diva, her life told in her voice in great detail so that she comes alive, a believable character.

In parts Rabasa's book shines, but it goes on overlong and can drag. Some parts of the plot are hard to believe--the extent of Lockwood's obsession, for one; Casals' husband announcing his latest conquest by holding aloft her purple underwear in a crowded Mexican dance hall. More hard to believe is the dialogue, which is too perfect to be credible. Toward the end of the book Lockwood's wife draws attention to this very problem:

"It's weird the way you start talking like a writer."

"As opposed to talking like a plumber?"

"You know what I mean. Like you don't really care whether anyone is listening or thinking that you're making sense, as long as the words resonate in your own head."

She's respondong to a speech of his which reads in part:

"You could look at the bottom of the pot and analyze the sediment of those ten thousand brewings and see our life divided into chapters. The Earl Gray phase and the era of the cheap Indian gunpowder and the year of green tea and the days of English Breakfast. Remember those green-tea times? We got up at five A.M. for Zen during seven months. I had a beard and you had a Buddhist-nun haircut. We were so earnest. We went for the whole thing--the wok, the brown rice, macrobiotics, less yin more yang."

Granted that in times of heightened emotion, as this scene arguably is, one's diction can be elevated, but the same complaint could be raised about most of the dialogue in the book: it's self-conscious, as if everyone is performing and has script writers feeding them lines.

Still, The Wonder Singer is worth the read for the character of the diva. And the book is more interesting told as it is, the Senora's story woven throughout Lockwood's, than it would have been had Rabasa elected instead to write a straightforward account of her life.

-- Debra Hamel