The Music Teacher

October 6, 2008
It's High Fidelity
for the orchestra set in this slim, assured drama. Among the clerks and instructors of McCoy's music store is Pearl Swain, a recently divorced violin instructor and almost a great violinist who spends most of her time mourning her perceived failures—her marriage, her musical career and her various relationships. But when Pearl meets Hallie Bolaris, a promising young musician with a troubled history, she recognizes in her young student a natural ear, and soon Pearl convinces herself that Hallie is the world's next violin prodigy. She immediately hatches a plan to mentor and train Hallie for the life she herself never had, but Pearl's interest in her favored student soon diverges from her musical training and builds toward a more disheartening climax. Hall, who wrote for television shows Judging Amy
and Joan of Arcadia
, doesn't shy away from the sour notes of lost dreams, failed careers and misguided intentions, and her novel, despite its heavier than necessary dose of navel-gazing, rings true because of it.

October 15, 2008
A music teacher 's failure with her gifted student is the starting point for this deeply felt meditation by adult and YA author Hall (The Noah Confessions, 2007, etc.) on the demands of musical passion and human love.

Pearl teaches violin at McCoy 's, a music store in West Los Angeles that carries offbeat instruments and caters to musicians. She is a lonely divorce half in love with the store 's manager Franklin, a musical purist, and pursued by the much younger fellow teacher Clive, a bass player. The novel shifts between the present, in which Pearl faces her limitations and overcomes her misassumptions about the men in her life, with the recent past, in which she found, taught and lost Hallie, the most gifted student of her career. Unlike most of Pearl 's students, whose well-to-do parents push them to play, 14-year-old Hallie was an orphan of meager means. She received a grant to take lessons despite the disinterest of the aunt and uncle raising her. Hallie 's natural talent and quixotic moods quickly captivated Pearl. From the vantage point of the present, Pearl recognizes that she invested too much of herself in Hallie, in part because, like Hallie, Pearl had faced great family opposition to her musical ambitions as a child. While teaching Hallie, however, she convinced herself that her concern for the girl 's welfare was altruistic. When Hallie came to Pearl and claimed she was pregnant, Pearl called the authorities on the domineering uncle she suspected of abuse. Then Hallie turned on Pearl, denying any problems at home and accusing Pearl of obsession and improprieties. No charges were filed on either side, but all contact —including lessons —ceased. Sorting out her mistakes with Hallie, Pearl re-examines her own relationship to music. Hall 's passion for music shines through —her rumination on the violinist 's wrist is particularly lovely —and because she never cuts emotional corners, there is nothing self-indulgent or sentimental about Pearl 's hard-won if makeshift happiness with down-to-earth Clive.

Presents music as a glorious metaphor for an approach to life.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2008
In this compelling novel, Hall, the author of several previous novels and the writer and producer of television shows like "Judging Amy" and "Joan of Arcadia", turns her quirky eye to Pearl Swain. Pearl is struggling to get past a failed marriage and a disappointing career as a musician. When she is assigned to give violin lessons to a gifted but troubled young woman, she finds herself caught up in her student's life. The aftermath of their interactions shakes up Pearl's own future. Hall's portrait of these characters is full of humor and heartbreak, as their unconventional lives take unexpected turns. The debates held by employees of a music store especially ring true. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.Alicia Korenman, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2008
Pearl Swain teaches violin at McCoys, a Los Angeles music shop, which is peopled by several eccentric fellow musicians, including opinionated manager Franklin and idealistic bassist Clive. Still smarting from her divorce from a feckless college professor who took up with one of his students, Pearl lives in a trailer park and isolates herself from everyone but her colleagues until 14-year-old Hallie Bolaris walks into her life.Hallie has just lost her mother.Her aunt brings her in for violin lessons, and Pearl is excited to discover that Hallie has genuine natural talent. Pearl pushes the girl to excel, and is disturbed to see bruises on one of Hallies wrists. Pearls concern sets off a series of events that leads her to question how much she shouldand canbe involved in her students lives. Thiskeenly observed and piercing character study of a complex, haunted woman grappling with the disappointments in her life and reevaluating her own ambitions should resonate with readers long after the final page is turned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)