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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2003, she won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. Linda has lived in Kenya, Singapore, Britain, and Japan before settling in Auckland, New Zealand, where she lives today. Her previous novel, Astrid & Veronika , was published in 2007.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Olsson (Astrid and Veronika) explores the hard-won wisdom that can come through grief. When classical musician Adam Anker (nE Lipski) stumbles upon a WWII exhibit at a museum in New Zealand and sees his birth name attached to an elderly woman's plea for information, he decides to search for his long-buried past as a way to lend clarity to his daughter Miriam's future. But later that day, Miriam is killed in an accident, and Adam spends the next year in mourning before contacting the woman, Clara Fried, and beginning a journey that spans three continents and four decades. Along the way, Adam returns to his native Poland after 20 years in New Zealand, discovers a family secret and, through letters and old friends, begins to know his parents as people. He also finds the strength to patch up his relationship with Miriam's mother, Cecilia, who narrates the final part of the book in second-person. Olsson's dense, magisterial prose pulls the reader in immediately, and Adam's profound sadness is perfectly handled-it's palpable, but never saccharine or overbearing as the narrative builds toward its unexpected conclusion. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*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.--Block, Allison Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
For Adam Anker, a violinist and composer living in New Zealand, the past lies on the other side of the world - in Poland, where he was born during World War II, and in Sweden, where he grew up. "I have never had any connection with my past," Adam tells an old woman who holds a clue to where he came from. "It has felt as if all I have ever had is the present." When Adam's only child, Miriam, is killed in an accident, that present caves in, leaving him face to face with the mystery of his origins and the secret he kept from his daughter about hers. Bit by bit, a group of Holocaust survivors, with their bundles of letters, photographs and memories, help Adam piece together his story - which is a mournful one indeed, but beautifully told. And it isn't until Adam learns about his own mother's past that he realizes the mistake he made with Miriam. "I did to my daughter what was done to me," he tells a friend. "I made her motherless."
