In this novella, a young girl undertakes to deliver herself from the unpleasantness of her tedious existence dominated by a crazed mother and oppressive Catholic school by exposing herself to the celebrity composer and conductor who lives next door, a process which results in her falling in love with the man, or at least longing for him to love her, and with him endeavoring to advance her musical career and education. The book is short on complete sentences, the story being told in stream of consciousness (or, perhaps, stream of unconsciousness) fragments connected by ellipses or dashes. At the beginning, I was entranced by these little prose poems--they reminded me of the finest moments of the great Marguerite Duras--but gradually they became more conventional and merely advanced plot or served as vehicles for the principals to deliver windy reflections on musical creativity. The book doesn't require much time commitment, and its considerable virtues make it memorable. ( )