Rose Tremain

The Gustav Sonata was an unusual book, but one that I really enjoyed reading, in fact, I stayed up half the night to finish it.

The book is set in Switzerland, before, during, and after the Second World War. Although the book branches out to include other characters and other relationships, the focal point of the book is the friendship, since kindergarten, of Gustav, a poor boy with a dead father and a critical, selfish, anti-Semitic and hostile mother, and of Anton, a well-off Jewish boy with a loving family, who are, nonetheless, pressuring Anton to become a concert pianist despite his chronic and overpowering stage fright.

It was interesting to get a glimpse of why Switzerland remained neutral during the Second World War. The book was very good at helping the reader understand the extent of the deprivations of poverty, and the quiet luxuries of wealth. We are permitted to see into the minds of many of the book's characters, including those of Gustav's parents, and to understand what made Gustav's mother the virago that she becomes.

I liked the book very much and recommend it.… (altro)

This book gripped me from the first. This is a tale set in the Cevennes, a still isolated area of Southern France. Here are farms - 'Mas', still worked by the families who have lived here for generations, or else bought by foreigners from England, the Low Countries, who want to 'live the dream'.

We meet alcoholic Aramon, his lonely sister Audrun, who are Cevennes through and through. We meet long term English residents Veronica and her lover Kitty. And then we meet Anthony, Veronica's brother, who thinks he'd like to move to France.

All have secrets. All have lives that are in some ways unsatisfactory. And from the moment that Anthony arrives in France, a series of events, with unlooked for and utterly unwanted consequences is set in motion.

I was involved, even as I found each character in some way unlikeable - there are no dashing heroes and heroines here.

I believed in the lives of each of these characters, and wanted to know how the story would unfold. I relished the description of this part of the Cevennes. I read on willingly, enjoying the story, and how it was told.… (altro)

This moving story is presented in three parts. We meet Gustav, brought up in some poverty by his indifferent mother, and Anton, who has a more privileged and cultured background, when both are five years old. The spare yet elegiac prose explores Gustav's loneliness and compassion, and how Anton's nervous disposition makes him unfit for the life his parents had hoped for him .

The back story, describing how his parents met, and how it is that Frau Perle speaks not at all of this phase of her life explains a lot and is in any case a fascinating account of aspects of Switzerland's role in the Second World War.

Finally, Gustave and Anton are older adults. Each is in his own way successful, each still involved in the life of the other, despite the different paths they have chosen. Perhaps Anton doesn't understand how deeply he and Gustav mean to one another. Until it is almost too late....

A fine, beautifully written book. I had to keep reading till I finished.… (altro)