" The next morning, Lucien woke up groggy they had enjoyed more than a few glasses of absinthe before going to bed, which in combination with so many kisses and caresses never failed to leave him with the sense of having spent hours in a moonlit field of wildflowers, pressed hard against the wet earth and staring up through the blossoms at the slowly spinning stars" or I want to leave you with a few gorgeous passages: I want you all to read this even if it does not resonate with you as it deeply did me. I have not stopped thinking about this book. This is a debut work by an author and this astounds me. 2 men and 2 women- all lost, yearning for love, beauty and the need to connect and yield with something larger than themselves. 4 lost people that are haunted, possessed and destined to take part in the larger drama of Tristan and Isolde. We travel across centuries from Paris, to Vienna, to Munich, to Pittsburgh, to New York. I would turn mad, obsessive like the people in this book.maybe.Ĥ people haunted and impacted by Wagner's opera. I limit myself to listening to this work in its entirety to three or four times a year or I would not be able to function. I saw my first performance of this masterpiece when I was 25 and I can say that I have never witnessed anything as powerful and sumptuous and sad than this. I found this book through a google search around fiction revolving around my favorite Opera: Tristan and Isolde (which is what my avatar is by the way :) and here this book showed up in all of its messy beauty. This is my fourth 5 star read so far this year and it seems to be the culmination of a bizarre tetralogy:īut this book, this book, this book was something that was written, it seemed, just for me!!!Įlements of high emotion, deep love, passion for opera and artistry and search for meaning within art, magic and the power of relationship. We were lucky to find a secluded virgin beach with a small cove and I curled up and read the remainder on three visits. I read 20 percent prior to our trip to Belize and knew I had found a sloppy masterpiece and saved the remainder for our trip. Made me cry, made me laugh, made me despair, made me hope, made me love and did it over and over and over again. I want to give all of my Goodreads friends a copy. Please listen to this as you read my review: Matthew Gallaway’s riveting debut will have readers spellbound from the opening page to its breathtaking conclusion.ĥ "imperfectly delicious, emotionally resonant and unapologetically melodramatic" stars!!!Ģ016 Gold Award - Most favorite book of the Year !! Grandly operatic in scale, their story is one of music and magic, love and death, betrayal and fate. This unlikely quartet is bound together across centuries and continents by the strange and spectacular history of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece opera Tristan and Isolde. When tragedy leads him to a magical discovery, Lucien embarks on a journey that will help him-and Martin, Maria, and Anna-learn that it’s not how many breaths you take, it’s what you do with those you’re given. Lucien is a young Parisian at the birth of the modern era, racing through the streets of Europe in an exuberant bid to become a singer for the ages. When the operatic power of her extraordinary voice leads Maria to Juilliard, New York seems to hold possibilities that are both exhilarating and uncertain. Maria is a tall, awkward, ostracized teenager desperate to break free from the doldrums of 1970s Pittsburgh. As she steps into the spotlight, however, she realizes that the harsh glare of fame may be more than she bargained for. But even as he comes to terms with the missteps of his past, he questions whether his life will feel more genuine going forward.ĭecades earlier, in the New York of the 1960s, Anna is destined to be a grande dame of the international stage. Martin is a forty-year-old lawyer who, despite his success, feels disoriented and disconnected from his life in post-9/11 Manhattan. From the smoky music halls of 1860s Paris to the tumbling skyscrapers of twenty-first-century New York, a sweeping tale of passion, music, and the human heart’s yearning for connection.
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