Appassionata

Starred review from March 9, 2009
As a child, Hoffman studied piano and dreamed of performing professionally until she redirected her ambition toward writing; here she wields her expertise in both with dazzling success. Acclaimed American pianist Isabel Merton, on tour in Europe, becomes romantically entangled with Anzor Islikhanov, a semiofficial representative of Chechnya who follows her around Europe. They are both enthralled to personal passions—hers for music, his for his ravaged country—and their relationship intensifies with thrilling inevitability as a Chechen radical leader (with whom Anzor is not-so-secretly sympathetic) manipulates Anzor's allegiance to his homeland and drives a wedge between him and Isabel. Hoffman's prose is reliably gorgeous, and while the narrative lends itself nicely to sharp commentary and observations on politics, power and the role of the United States in a changing world, what's memorable is the way Hoffman maps the intersection of art, history and man's striving for meaning.

April 1, 2009
A concert pianist falls for a Chechen nationalist, with disastrous consequences.

Better known as a memoirist (After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Aftermath of the Holocaust, 2004, etc.), Hoffman displays in her second novel the same weakness that slightly marred her first (The Secret, 2002): The ideas are frequently better-rounded than the characters. Touring piano star Isabel Merton meets Anzor Islikhanov after a concert in Paris and embarks on a credibility-straining affair with this touchy"representative of the Chechen government." Anzor sees condescension and offenses to his honor everywhere. He exhibits an alarming appetite for revenge against his country's Soviet oppressors and sneering contempt for Westerners, variously dismissed as"self-indulgent…spoiled…stupid." (It doesn't help that the friends Isabel introduces to him are caricatures of vapid, well-meaning liberals.) He follows Isabel from Brussels to Copenhagen, Vienna, Prague and beyond, improbably taking her along to meetings with a kaffiyeh-clad man who might as well have"terrorist" tattooed across his forehead. The sense of an obtrusive, didactic authorial hand is reinforced by lengthy excerpts from the book Isabel is reading, a memoir by her former teacher Ernst Wolfe (another refugee from disaster who disdains sloppy Westerners), and by her meetings with a fellow Wolfe student who is now a famous cellist—and a stereotypically go-for-the-gusto contrast to sensitive Isabel. Hoffman nearly redeems 200 pages of this irritating build-up in the novel's searing final section after a bomb goes off at Isabel's concert in Barcelona. The pianist is hurled into a spiritual and psychological crisis: She can't perform, she can't practice, she can't even listen to music. Echoes of Camus and Dostoevsky reverberate as Isabel wonders what possible meaning art can have in a world beset by violence and hatred. Her reclamation of beauty and discovery of a new passion make for a moving finale. If only it didn't require such long and schematic preparation to get there.

Ambitious and elegantly written, but seriously overdetermined.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2009
The award-winning Hoffman, former senior editor at the "New York Times" and the author of several highly regarded works of nonfiction (e.g., "Exit into History"), has now written a compelling novel that charts the inner life of her heroine, Isabel Merton. Isabel is an accomplished pianist, and on one of her many tours abroad, she encounters the mysterious Chechen rebel Anzor. At first, she is drawn to him and feels sympathy for his cause, and soon enough she enters into an affair with him. They meet clandestinely in various European cities, but as she comes to learn more about his mysterious undertakings and witnesses at close range the havoc they can create, she comes to question her own values and her fragmented, unsettled way of life. Interspersed throughout the narrative are flashbacks to Isabel's earlier life, which appear in a journal she is reading, kept by her former music teacher in Berlin. Hoffman reveals here an impressive command both of classical music and of world affairs. Literate readers with a taste for the international will especially enjoy this highly intelligent work.Edward Cone, New York

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2009
Concert pianist Isabel Merton travels solo and practices and performs alone. As she takes the stage in Paris, Sofia, Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Barcelona, we became acutely aware of her isolation, grief, and vulnerability. Hoffman, the author of indelible memoirs about the lost worlds of European Jewry and the psychology of exile, was studying to be a pianist when her family was forced to flee Krakw. In her second novelan exquisite and disquieting story of love, terror, and loss, with geopolitical resonance and a profound moral calculusshe writes ecstatically about how it feels to bring the glorious music her protagonist cherishes to life. Introduced under curious circumstances to Anzor, a mysterious Chechen, Isabel is passionately attracted. But in scenes of escalating menace and suspense, his rage and embrace of violence put her faith in beauty and music to the test. Brilliantly improvising on the famous story of how Lenin loved the Appassionata, Beethovens tumultuous piano sonata, yet refused its call for mercy and transcendence, Hoffman asks what defines humankind, bloodshed or art? Her answer? Suffice it to say that when disciplined and devoted pianist Isabel compares her hands to Anzors, she realizes that hers are stronger.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)