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Title: The Virtuoso by Margriet de Moor, Ina Rilke ISBN: 158567253X Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 26 February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83
Rating: 5
Summary: FOR LOVERS ONLY
Comment: Do you love romance? Do you love opera? Do you love history? Do you love Naples? If you answer "Yes" to any of the foregoing, Margriet de Moor's THE VIRTUOSO is a book for a lover such as you.
De Moor's story is richly sensual -- not in the lubricious but in the fullest sense of that word. With great power and beauty, she makes you see and hear, taste and smell, touch and feel what her characters are seeing and and hearing, tasting and smelling, touching and feeling.
The story is poignant and powerful, and manages also to be informative as it moves swiftly yet without any sense of haste to its ending. As with any richly sensual experience, the reader is apt to finish this book with only one regret: that it was altogether if ever so sweetly too brief.
Rating: 2
Summary: The title does not reflect the ability
Comment: This book reminds me of Suskind's 'Perfume' on many accounts. Both are translations into English. Both are set in Europe of the 18th century, and both have left me disappointed. The Virtuoso is the story of Italian noblewoman Carlotta and her love/crush on the male soprano Gasparo, whom she remembers from her village childhood. So far, so good. But i find that i can't feel anything for any of the characters in this disjointed book. De Moor is a trained singer, and fills the book with technical terms. A background of music study at tertiary level meant i could understand what she was writing, but i didn't feel that it added anything to the story. I couldn't help but imagine that someone without a musical background would find it outright annoying.
Rating: 4
Summary: Done Well, However
Comment: This work by Ms. Margriet de Moor is very well written, however I believe it will appeal to a narrower group than some other works in the same genre. The Neapolitan setting is wonderfully detailed but is merely a side note to the dominant first person narrative.
And the narrative is a bit unusual in that the woman who is the center of the work has a variety of affairs, intimately detailed but not lurid, however her obsessive affair is with a "Castrato". The book is massively detailed for the musically literate, however for those of us not familiar with the unique singing skills of this physically modified man, the detail can be an impediment to seeing what the Author intends, the larger your musical lexicon the more this story will appeal.
The idea of a love affair between this unusual pair could easily sink into a voyeuristic trudge, but this never happens as Ms. De Moor writes well, and when describing the intimacies never descends to the prurient.
A very good book that should be approached cautiously, for the musically very well informed a wonderful read, for those looking for a bit less romance search elsewhere.
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Title: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier ISBN: 0452283205 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai, Ina Rilke ISBN: 0385722206 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0151008116 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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