The Prague Sonata

August 7, 2017
In Morrow’s first novel since The Forgers, a former concert pianist fascinated by a mysterious musical text tries to track down the composer’s identity, the missing passages, and the woman who saved it for posterity by tearing it apart. An old Czech immigrant living in Queens gives pianist-turned-musicologist Meta Taverner the torn-out middle section of an unsigned musical work probably from the late 18th or early 19th century. Little is known about the original manuscript except that, 60 years before, in Nazi-occupied Prague, the manuscript’s owner, Otylie Bartošová, divided it into three pieces (each piece a complete movement) to hide it from the Nazis. The music’s passion and genius inspire Meta to leave her lawyer boyfriend and East Village apartment for research in Czechoslovakia. She arrives in Prague with a list of contacts: some prove helpful, others work against her. When she runs out of contacts, she goes door to door, assisted by an attractive Czech-American journalist. They locate a friend of Otylie’s husband, and then head to London, where Otylie had escaped without her husband but with her part of the manuscript. Music infuses Morrow’s descriptions of war, revolution, peace, love, friendship, and betrayal. Finely crafted storytelling ensures the multigenerational, transcontinental plot told through various points of view never becomes confusing. The reading pleasure comes from both Meta’s pursuit and the prose, which brims with musical, historical, and cultural detail. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

August 1, 2017

In 1939 Prague, as the grasping Germans sweep in, Otylie Barosova protects a musical score her father cherished by splitting it into three parts. Decades later, an elderly Czech immigrant gives New York-based musicologist Meta Taverner the yellowed pages of an entrancing but incomplete sonata that has the sound of an authentic 18th-century work. Is it by C.P.E. Bach? Mozart? A lesser composer demonstrating sudden genius? A burningly eager Meta sets off to Prague in search of the missing movements and the score's original owner. She's leaving behind a somewhat unsympathetic boyfriend yet heading toward adventure and revelation, as she's helped by a genial concert pianist manque recommended by her mentor and a Czech American journalist as interested in her as he is in her story. She also encounters those who want the piece for themselves, which adds some suspense as Meta tries, literally, to put all the pieces together. In the pileup of coincidence and details, the language occasionally goes flat, but the narrative moves satisfyingly to the ending you'll know you want. VERDICT A big, fun, page-turning rush of a novel, with Bard professor Morrow (The Forgers) writing wonderfully about music (Meta isn't just a classicist but a metalhead, too). [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2017
A musical mystery set against the backdrop of a nation shattered by war and loss.How many piano sonatas did Ludwig van Beethoven write? A music student might be quick to say 32--but that disallows the possibility that there's one hidden somewhere or one by Mozart or Haydn that no one has ever seen before. That's the conceit that Morrow (The Forgers, 2014, etc.) spins with this sonically rich novel, in which a Czech woman, Otylie Bartosova, only steps ahead of the German invaders in 1939, divides her inheritance among family and friends--namely, an anonymous Classical-era score given to her by her father and now split up into three, rendering it essentially without value to the avaricious Nazis. On immigrating to America, Otylie loses sight and hope of the treasure--part of which resurfaces years later in contemporary New York, beguiling a musicologist named Meta Taverner, who "knew it was impossible she had stumbled on another Beethoven Werk ohne Opuszahl in deepest, darkest Queens" but presses on, having now found a new source of meaning in a life burdened with quiet tragedies. She goes to Prague, seeking clues. Morrow delights in local color, in the "home of the Golem and crazy Rudolf's equally crazy alchemists, not to mention Kafka's bug," though he works in an intriguing counterintuition: who's to say that the manuscript isn't in Prague, Texas, or Prague, Nebraska? The story, which runs a touch too long, takes a conventional whodunit twist with the introduction of a competing musicologist who wants the glory (and money) for himself even as Meta hits walls that induce a crisis of confidence in her abilities--and therein lies something of a leitmotiv. Yet, with the help of a dogged journalist and other allies, Meta works her way toward a hard-won resolution. As she says, "Sometimes in life what's broken can't be put back together," to which Otylie replies, "Or maybe it was never truly broken at all." An elegant foray into music and memory.

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
The frame of Morrow's eighth novel, in which the main character searches for lost parts of a sonata, is itself like a sonata: a sonata in action that is acted out in the story. Music weaves it together. Characters intertwine, break apart, and reunite; war scatters them and the things they love. It's a complicated, parallel-time tale with multiple characters, and it details Prague's suffering during two world wars, followed by Communist rule and the Velvet Revolution. Present-day pianist Meta Taverner is given part of a sonata manuscript that she suspects is valuable. She hopes to reunite it with its other parts, separated during Hitler's vicious sweep through Prague. The plot follows Meta's search as past political upheaval, disruptive personal events, and a greedy enemy all threaten her success. These multiple story lines and historical references work well for readers familiar with twentieth-century Eastern European history, but others will need to brush up. Abrupt switches in time periods can be confusing, as (for nonmusicians) are the musical references ( Mozartean but with some curious chromaticism ), but, overall, this textured, style-rich historical novel should prove enjoyable for anyone who loves a symphony of words. Like Ayelet Waldman in Love & Treasure (2014) and Lauren Belfer in And After the Fire (2016), Morrow asks difficult questions about what to do with the unclaimed relics of war.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)