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.

November 27, 2017
Actor Delaine opens the audiobook of Morrow’s latest in an over-the-top, sultry voice reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy. Thankfully she soon settles into a more natural and pleasant voice. Meta Taverner, a young American musicologist, is given a section of an 18th-century sonata score and charged with two impossible tasks: find the other two sections of the sonata and return the complete piece to its original owner. Meta is haunted by the exquisite music, which she strongly believes to be an undiscovered work by a master composer, possibly Beethoven. Morrow evokes life in the Nazi and Communist eras of 20th-century Czechoslovakia and explains the characteristics of various musical forms as they arise in the story. Delaine has trouble with various character accents: while Meta’s new love interest and several elderly Czech men and women are quite believable, some of the other Czechs, like the villains trying to steal the manuscript, and Americans, among them the heroine’s generous friends, scratch the ear. But overall Delaine keeps listeners attuned to this well-wrought novel. A Grove hardcover.

A magnificent obsession sparks Morrow's gorgeous novel, and Christina Delaine's narration adds the needed heat. A plot as intricate as a sonata winds together the German occupation of Prague in 1939; an authentic eighteenth-century musical score hidden from the Nazis; and the life of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist in contemporary New York. Delaine's lush tones allow the characters to take center stage. A Czech immigrant gives Meta one piece of a mysterious eighteenth-century score, asking only that she search for its original owner. Delaine is spot-on at conveying just the right emotions as Meta's passion grows in her quest to find the composer and the missing parts of the manuscript--and to bring its haunting melodies together. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine