The Weight of a Piano

Starred review from October 15, 2018
Two people nursing childhood wounds meet via a piano and take a journey toward closure across Death Valley.Cander (Whisper Hollow, 2015, etc.) grabs the reader in her opening pages: a bravura, thickly detailed account of the creation of a Blüthner piano from wood culled in the forests of Romania, then lovingly aged and shaped in a factory in Leipzig. Blüthner No. 66,825 comes to Katya, a gifted Soviet musician who reluctantly immigrates to California with her husband, Mikhail, who promises that her beloved piano will soon follow. Somehow, decades later in 2012, it has wound up in the possession of Clara, an auto mechanic in Bakersfield who impulsively puts it up for sale after she and the piano are kicked out by her live-in boyfriend, frustrated by her inability to commit. How these stories connect doesn't become apparent until long after Clara reneges on her sale to photographer Greg Zeldin, realizing she can't give up the only connection to her parents, who died in a fire when she was 12. Cander expertly parcels out her revelations: Alert readers will likely figure out that Greg is Katya's son before he admits it on route to Death Valley, but the final plot twist is a satisfying surprise. Clues are carefully planted, however, as Cander builds parallel narratives in alternating chapters. Clara warily joins forces with Greg, allowing him to lease the piano and following him to Death Valley, where he takes a series of photos of the piano perched in locations he once visited with his mother. Flashbacks chronicle Katya's increasing misery in the U.S., mitigated only temporarily--and ultimately disastrously--when her piano belatedly arrives. As the narratives converge, Greg convinces himself and almost convinces Clara that the piano shows they were meant to be together. Her realization that it's not so simple prompts an odd but beautiful finale that leads from inside the piano's consciousness to the summit of Dante's Peak.Deftly plotted and well written, a gentle meditation on the healing power of art--and its limitations.

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Starred review from November 5, 2018
In her elegiac and evocative novel, Cander (Whisper Hollow) explores the legacy of loss, the intersections of art and music, and what happens when physical objects assume outsized symbolism. As a young girl in the Soviet Union in 1962, Katya admires her neighbor’s Blüthner piano; when he leaves it to her after his death, Katya pursues her musical passions and becomes obsessed with maintaining possession of the piano, even when given the opportunity to flee as a dissident. In California in 2012, Clara is a 26-year-old auto mechanic. Her boyfriend has just ended their relationship and demanded that she move out—along with the Blüthner that is her only remaining link to her dead parents. When a piano-moving accident leaves Clara with a broken hand and unable to work, she impulsively puts the piano for sale on Craigslist—and the response she receives sends her deep into the barren beauty of Death Valley and into a new relationship that may shed light on her family history, and on the cursed history of that piano. Reminiscent of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, Cander’s novel delves into the often unexplainable genesis of artistic inspiration and examines how family legacy—the physical objects people inherit, the genetic traits people carry on, and the generational lore people internalize—can both ignite imagination and limit its scope. Cander brilliantly and convincingly expresses music and visual art in her writing, capturing both within a near-alien but surprisingly stunning landscape.

November 15, 2018

In 1962 Russia, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed a German Blüthner piano and lives to play, compose, and eventually teach music. In 2012, 26-year-old Clara Lundy, a gifted car mechanic living in Bakersfield, CA, is thrown out of her apartment by her latest boyfriend. In the process of moving into a new place, her treasured Blüthner piano slips, breaking her hand and putting her working days on hold. The piano is the only remaining possession that ties her to her parents, who were killed in a house fire when she was 12, but she needs money to pay the rent and places an ad for the piano. After agreeing to sell to a photographer with passionate ties to the piano, Clara immediately regrets it, and neither woman will cede her claim. The two negotiate a rental agreement that leads them both on a remarkable road trip of discovery and healing from shared tragic pasts that won't let go. VERDICT From award-winning author Cander (Whisper Hollow), this beautiful tale of the intersecting stories of Katya and Clara, two strong women working hard to rebuild their shattered lives, is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2018
In Soviet Russia, Katya inherits an old upright Bl�thner piano from a neighbor. She goes to Leningrad to study music, where she meets and marries engineering student Mikhail, and the two eventually settle in California with their young son. There, Katya's beloved piano becomes her refuge as Mikhail turns into a violent drunk. A piano is more of a burden to Clara Lundy, who received a Bl�thner from her father on her twelfth birthday. Her parents died in a house fire soon after, and, though she can't play it, she clings to the piano over the years. After she impulsively relinquishes the Bl�thner to photographer Greg, seller's remorse compels her to follow him to Death Valley, where he is using the piano for a photo series. Their time in the desert leads to revelations about the surprising ways the piano links them together. Strong characterization and attention to detail, whether in the manufacture of a piano or in the desolate beauty of Death Valley, elevate Cander's (Whisper Hollow, 2015) tale about learning to let go of the past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)