Ben McNally is a bookseller in Toronto, and has been diligently foisting good books on people for more than thirty years.
The Beauty of Honor
Here's the thing. I don't know why I picked this book up in the first place. I didn't even know what it was going to look like; I had a bound galley, in a generic pale blue wrapper. It found me somehow, this mesmerizing and unusual book. American Music. Indeed.
Start with a woman on a subway train, watching herself in the window of the door until outside light erases the image. She is on her way to the veteran's hospital, to work on the damaged body of a soldier. She is a masseuse and her name, we'll eventually discover, is Honor. It is 2005.
The soldier's name is Milo, and his disability, while unexplained, is serious. His legs don't work. His sessions with the masseuse have loosened something inside him. He thinks he might be going crazy.
As Honor works the muscles of his back (he guards his front) Milo enters a dream state. The visions that she induces in him with her manipulations, she shares.
It is 1936, and a saxophone playing law student returns to New York after playing his way to Europe and back on a cruise ship. His wife is at the pier to meet him, and her cousin is there too.
It is 1960. A famous if reclusive photographer has been persuaded to mount an exhibition of her work. An inexplicable act derails the planned show.
It is 1635. An alchemist at the court of the Sultan Murad IV becomes smitten with a dancer from the harem.
It is now again, it is then. It is music and it is light. It is Persia, it is New York, it is Saigon. It is jazz, and cymbals, and impossible love.
The stories that emerge from the collision of their bodies are like the image of the woman on the train, visible and then not. Milo sends her away. Then asks for her back. The fragments of stories she elicits exert the same hold on the reader as they do on him.
"What happens next?" he asks.
"Only one way to find out," she replies.
But Milo and Honor have their own histories, and when their separate routes to the room in the hospital enter the mix the story takes on even more dimensions.
Honor will tease them out of Milo's reluctant body.
The disparate strands of the plot will eventually come together, in their own time. It takes a light but skilled hand to bring all the strings together and Jane Mendelsohn is up to the task. This is an inspired and flawlessly crafted story, with genuine characters, enough space to allow the reader some scope, and just a touch of magic.
It is a triumph of imagination delivered with power and understated confidence. More impressively, it ends as strongly as it begins.
It is one of life's great joys to come upon beauty and power unexpectedly. You'll enjoy this haunting and accomplished novel.
Start with a woman on a subway train, watching herself in the window of the door until outside light erases the image. She is on her way to the veteran's hospital, to work on the damaged body of a soldier. She is a masseuse and her name, we'll eventually discover, is Honor. It is 2005.
The soldier's name is Milo, and his disability, while unexplained, is serious. His legs don't work. His sessions with the masseuse have loosened something inside him. He thinks he might be going crazy.
As Honor works the muscles of his back (he guards his front) Milo enters a dream state. The visions that she induces in him with her manipulations, she shares.
It is 1936, and a saxophone playing law student returns to New York after playing his way to Europe and back on a cruise ship. His wife is at the pier to meet him, and her cousin is there too.
It is 1960. A famous if reclusive photographer has been persuaded to mount an exhibition of her work. An inexplicable act derails the planned show.
It is 1635. An alchemist at the court of the Sultan Murad IV becomes smitten with a dancer from the harem.
It is now again, it is then. It is music and it is light. It is Persia, it is New York, it is Saigon. It is jazz, and cymbals, and impossible love.
The stories that emerge from the collision of their bodies are like the image of the woman on the train, visible and then not. Milo sends her away. Then asks for her back. The fragments of stories she elicits exert the same hold on the reader as they do on him.
"What happens next?" he asks.
"Only one way to find out," she replies.
But Milo and Honor have their own histories, and when their separate routes to the room in the hospital enter the mix the story takes on even more dimensions.
Honor will tease them out of Milo's reluctant body.
The disparate strands of the plot will eventually come together, in their own time. It takes a light but skilled hand to bring all the strings together and Jane Mendelsohn is up to the task. This is an inspired and flawlessly crafted story, with genuine characters, enough space to allow the reader some scope, and just a touch of magic.
It is a triumph of imagination delivered with power and understated confidence. More impressively, it ends as strongly as it begins.
It is one of life's great joys to come upon beauty and power unexpectedly. You'll enjoy this haunting and accomplished novel.
