The Polyphony Life

Elise Blackwell's third novel, An Unfinished Score, explores the extent of emotion in the context of music performers, composers, and conductors. There are no characters with regular 9-5 jobs, and we are submersed in the language and consequences of their experiences with the medium. The novel's catalyst: Suzanne Sullivan (a violinist) learns her lover (a conductor) has died in a plane crash, and she's left to finish composing his viola concerto. En route, she introduces us to her dysfunctional home life, including an emotionally despondent husband (Ben, a composer and cello player) and the promiscuous, single-parent best friend (Petra, a violinist). Postmortem, the lover's widow contacts Suzanne and blackmails her in exchange for silence regarding the affair.

The novel reveals itself as a realistic interpretation of human sentiment in atypical relationships. Suzanne's emotional extremities are only briefly mentioned by Blackwell, saving the reader from delving into the mush that one expects in mainstream literature. When Suzanne releases the sadness of losing the lover in her four-year affair, Blackwell accomplishes it in two concise sentences: "Now she dissolves. Her crying is as long as it is fierce, and when she is through she is dry of tears, more calm than tired." Instead of a woman who crumbles for more than half the book, she sobs halfway through the book, skipping all the hysterical details. Her reaction to her husband's infidelity is just as short: "'It just happened,' Ben is saying. 'I don't know, really, it just happened.' She blinks, and the visual static clears. Staring at the small squares of her knees, she thinks that this is something she can understand, that she should understand." Instead of irrationality, Suzanne responds with nothing; she tries to be angry, but it isn't convincing, and it's not meant to convince. The woman gives an expected response to not seem guilty, seeing how she's just as adulterous as her husband. Realistic responses are what kept me reading, since I see so little regulated emotion in other plots, where a simple breakup can leave characters with baggage for the rest of their lives.

While there is surprise in Suzanne's reaction to Ben's affair, the predictability of the situation is a bit too easy. Blackwell describes the best friend Petra in the second chapter with fringy lashes, beautiful blue eyes, and standard Swedish good looks. Suzanne shrugs them off as non-threatening: "Sometimes when Suzanne looks at Petra, she wonders why she doesn't hate her on sight, as many women do. It helps that Petra thinks she looks common." While Suzanne can dismiss a fantasy girl, it was hard for me not to, especially since the trio lives together, and Suzanne leaves for extended periods to complete the viola concerto and, previously, be with her lover.

More interesting than the current sexual affairs are the deviations into factual history of musicians' love lives. The way a performer (almost always a male) relates to a woman gives a sense of the complexities in syncopation, musically and sexually. For example, Hector Berlioz was driven crazy by the juxtaposition of one woman and his symphony: "The Fantastique swelled from his obsession with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson.... Once Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Chopin searched the suburbs of Paris for their love-struck friend, convinced that he might kill himself over a woman he had never met and to whom he wrote frightening letters...." Musical history that relates the reader to a genre he or she might have never been part of and only experienced second-hand appears sporadically. Blackwell's impeccable timing of these passages prevents the reader from experiencing the distraught or pain of a sad stock character, and we instead gather our own feelings using the empirical reality of relationships. When performance is described, however, it can seem too easy a description. In one instance, Suzanne and her professional quartet are rehearsing. We are told "[p]laying chamber music involves an intimacy between people that is no weaker than...