Duet for One

The performing arts are important to Martha Toll’s fiction. It is not only art that carries emotions and ideas—they are infused in the lives of the artists. In her debut novel, Three Muses, a brilliant young ballet dancer meets and falls in love with a man whose beautiful singing voice helped him survive the Holocaust. The novel is about loss and memory, independence and love, and all those themes are expressed through encounters with song and dance at its most erudite level.

Now, in her second novel, Duet for One, we encounter Dara, an English professor who is also a classically trained violist and Adam, a brilliant and handsome violinist struggling with the death of his mother, herself a concert pianist. This novel also deals—quite effectively—with themes of love and independence, loss and memory—and all of it is expressed in her exacting descriptions of music and musicians.

The novel opens with the death of Adele Pearl, Adam’s mother and one half of the piano duo Pearl and Pearl—Adam’s father Victor is the other half. They raised Adam in a rich musical environment; the whole family was centered on the world of classical music. Adam struggled with the expectation that he would become a musician earlier in his life, and now his mother’s death has recalled how he strafed under her demanding and distant love.

Dara grew up in a less sophisticated family; she is the lone musician in her home. When it is time to go to college, she chooses to pursue a slightly more practical BA in literature rather than a conservatory degree. Under the pressure to do both music and academics, and aware of Adele’s demanding nature, she ultimately drops music. Now Adele’s death has stirred up her memories of that choice, her abandonment of a musical career and her relationship with Adam.

One of Toll’s real strengths is her ability to capture the work performing artists do. In Three Muses, she captured the sheer physical labor involved with ballet dancing as well as the complex relationship between the dancer and the choreographer. Here her depiction of the muscle building necessary to have the hands and fingers of a violist or cellist are fascinating. The sheer physical labor that is part of musical mastery is palpable—so much depends upon a strong wrist and fingers. A bonus here is that, as we follow the rehearsals and performances of various musicians, we get an excellent chamber music playlist.

The most convincing and moving love story here is the one that has just ended when the novel begins. Although it is Adam’s history with Dara that is the main thrust of the plot, watching Victor learn to live without his wife has greater urgency. Victor must honor her memory and marvel at all they had together while somehow moving on. His learning to play with new partners and make new music is the novel’s strongest evocation of the life behind art.

The chronology here is complex, and we get a fairly complete view of both Dara and Adam’s lives from adolescence onward, moving backward and forward, probing Adam’s relationship with his mother, other women and music, seeing Dara’s teaching career, the dissolution of her marriage, and her loyalty to other friends.

There is little surprising in the ending: once Dara decides to send condolences on his mother’s death, and therefore reconnects with her lost love, most readers will know what’s coming. But like music you have heard before, the experience is still rewarding.