Sonata for Miriam: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Now l am here, in Krakow, where my life began..." (more)
Key Phrases: Clara Fried, Adam Lipski, New Zealand (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* If we don’t know where we come from, can we really know who we are? That’s the question that haunts Adam Anker, the middle-aged, New Zealand–based music professor who narrates most of Olsson’s poignant new novel. Growing up in Sweden, Adam forever wondered why his distant Polish mother wouldn’t tell him about the circumstances of his birth and the father he never knew. When his own daughter, Mimi, is killed in a tragic accident, Adam sets off on a quest to find his roots. His search, which begins at a Holocaust exhibit in an Auckland museum, takes him to Krakow, Poland, where he spends time in the company of two wizened gentlemen who dispense a series of devastating secrets. (Adam also intermittently reflects on Mimi’s mother, Cecelia, a lover long absent from his life since she forced him to make a heartbreaking choice.) The novel’s final chapters are narrated by Cecelia, as she anticipates a reunion with Adam after nearly 20 years. As in her first novel (Astrid & Veronika, 2007), Olsson renders luminous prose that lingers over the startling beauty of New Zealand and the blistering truths of the human heart. This is a potent, piercing tale of revelation and regret. --Allison Block

Product Description

A haunting novel of loss, love, and human connection from the author of Astrid & Veronika

Linda Olsson’s first novel, Astrid & Veronika, introduced readers to her gorgeous prose, and her extraordinary understanding of human relationships. With her second novel, she once again charts that terrain in a novel that also explores the significant impact of history on individual lives. In Sonata for Miriam, two events occur that will change composer Adam Anker’s life forever. Embarking on a journey that ranges from New Zealand to Poland, and then Sweden, Anker not only uncovers his parents’ true fate during World War II, but he also finally faces the consequences of an impossible choice he was forced to make twenty years before—a choice that changed the trajectory of his life.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (February 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143114700
• ISBN-13: 978-0143114703
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #156,728 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless, Beautiful Walk through Emotions, March 4, 2009

By	Sudarshan Dayanidhi (Los Angeles, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

'Sonata for Miriam' is a wonderful lyrical book, which uses multiple styles of writing (changing first-person narrative, letters) to convey the story of dealing with loss, finding ones past and unclosed love (is it ever?). Adam Anker is the main protagonist who accidentally discovers a picture in a museum which leads him to question his past which leads him to Poland although he lives in New Zealand and grew up in Sweden. In addition to this momentous event he has to deal with great personal loss and re-evaluate the priorities in his life. As the book evolves one learns of his loss, his discovery of his past, his past loves, his childhood. There are sections where one understands the behavior and responses of those who were close to him, through their own voices. While the story is a very touching beautiful story leading one back to the WW2 Krakow, it is more than anything a wonderful book exploring solitude, emotions and love. I have not read 'Astrid & Veronika' so I am not sure if the writing styles compare or even if it is a similar exploration, but I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever wondered about the lives of those past, as well as tried to understand love and loss. A word of caution is that this deals with a lot of emotions and I had to take a break from it and ponder and linger on some of the feelings created during reading this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reconnection, March 11, 2009

By	Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Sometimes coincidences can be immensely fruitful in generating a novel. On the same bright Saturday morning in Auckland, New Zealand, composer Adam Anker both finds the key to his lost childhood and loses his own child. The first is a metaphor, the second a reality. For Adam's teenage daughter Miriam is killed in a random accident; this intricate book is the verbal equivalent of the violin sonata that Adam writes in an attempt to exorcise her death. But that same Saturday morning has planted a seed. Adam has come upon a piece of information that will eventually take him back to his birthplace in Krakow, in a quest to learn about his family and reconnect with his estranged lover Cecilia, who does not yet know of her daughter's death.

Sometimes, though, coincidences can be taken too far. Even if you grant that first link in a chain -- that an old Polish woman with an intimate connection to Adam's family should also turn up in distant New Zealand -- the remaining fragments join up a little too neatly to be plausible after the Holocaust had shattered most such connections. And it is a complicated story, involving two families, pairs of siblings, and a silver box of conveniently-never-opened letters. Told as it is, in a time-shifting texture a memories within memories, the story is certainly mesmerizing, but also difficult to keep straight on a factual level. Linda Olsson, a Swedish author now living in New Zealand, writes like a poet: "Should I have known that this scene, in its everyday triviality, would become the shimmering crescendo of the memories on which I now sustain a life?" But she also takes a poet's licence in creating parallels between characters -- for example those involving music, speech, and silence -- that, while beautiful, also seem a little too contrived.

Contrived. It is Olsson's own word. Early in the novel, Adam says: "Simplicity is underrated. It is possible to consciously create the complex, the contrived, but it is impossible to manufacture simplicity." All through the book, you can see Olsson aiming for the one and achieving only the other. Only in the final sections, where Cecilia takes over as the narrative voice and we go to her lonely island off the coast of Sweden, does the author begin to approach simplicity. But she does so in a psychic inner monologue -- involving more silences, other deaths, and another sibling -- that makes it difficult to distinguish fact from fantasy. I did find myself moved by the end of the book -- but I would be hard put to say exactly what happens.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure to read, March 31, 2009

By	D. Suzuki (Newark, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book follows Adam as he seeks answers to his past and find out who his parents were as well as how he came to be a single parent of his daughter Miriam. This book was a pleasure to read as you slowly peel back the layers of Adam's history but at certain transitions I was a little confused as to what was going on.

For the most part the book works its way backwards through Adam's memories until the very end when Adam's journey concludes. You know that Adam's daughter, Miriam, dies but not how. That is actually not revealed almost to the end of the book. You also do not find out who the mother of Miriam is until a good while into the book. There were several surprises. I was shocked by the ultimatum that Adam's true love issues him and who Adam's real mother was and how he ended up with the woman he had thought was his birth mother. If you want to know the truth you have to pick up the book!