The Weight of a Piano

The beginning of this book is beautiful and compelling. The middle is all over the place and evokes so many different emotions. The almost end is awful, but at the very end it is wonderful. The story of one piano is emotional and heavy, but in the end it is good. And in the end Clara is good. I will be thinking about this book for a while. These characters will stick with me too. Very worth the read.

Two stories alternate in this book. One is the story of a woman in Russia who loves her piano and has to leave it behind when she goes to live in America. The other is the story of a woman in California who hesitates to get involved with others because she was orphaned at a young age. She, too, owns a piano, given to her by her father before his death, but it is a piano she has never learned to play.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS:

This book felt like it must have been written collaboratively, with authors who are good writers (some of the parts about the piano) and bad writers (the parts about the relationships). Story events happened randomly and in an unbelievable way, and the final ending, which I'd held out hope for satisfaction with the disjointed parts, was especially disappointing.

I received a Goodreads message yesterday, warning me that this reader had found this book to be far short of the positive buzz it has been receiving. If only I'd received this message before I was a hundred pages in.