[GohJHM9k]

There aren?t enough adjectives to describe this glorious novel. However, here are 3 for starters: intelligent, informative, ingenious.

It is the story of the love, courtship and marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann. Clara, a young naive girl, musical prodigy in her own right, falls for Robert Schumann. Her bullying father opposes the union but, this is the height of the Romantic Era, and true love prevails. Robert and Clara marry but Clara escapes from one prision to another. Robert is beset with mental illness and Clara is beset by no less than 10 pregnancies! Yet, forced to be the breadwinner, she must stay strong and successful ?..
Drawing on many details that must have been included in the Schumanns? marriage diary, Janice Galloway paints a detailed picture of the tensions and the ofttimes present bleakness and desperation in Clara?s life. The narrative style is extraordinary. The action is presented from the viewpoint of the 3 main protagonists: Clara, her father and Robert Schumann himself. The reader feels as though s/he is inside their heads, following their thought processes (stream of consciousness?) yet, at the same time, s/he is slightly distanced because this is a 3rd person narrative with the feel of a biography. The style does take time to get used to but it is well-worth the effort.

The structure of the novel is also extraordinary. An enforced separation during their courtship sees Robert Schumann set over 100 lyrical poems to music. One of these cycles - Frauenliebe und -leben by Adalbert von Chamisso - Schumann?s Opus 42 - consists of 8 poems. The book is structured around these poems, starting with ?Seit ich ihn gesehen? (Since I saw him ?.), the section in which Clara meets Schumann to ?Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan? (Now you have hurt me for the first time) in which Schumann dies and leaves Clara a widow with 8 children to feed. I found this an ingenious device for interweaving the music into the structure of the novel, demonstrating the fundamental role it played in Clara Schumann?s life.

The backdrop of the novel is extremely colourful, littered as it is with the great composers of the C19th - Mendelssohn, Chopin, Paganini, Lizst and Brahms, each with their own distinctive ways and characters. There?s plenty on musical theory and lots of interesting detail regarding piano teaching methods of the time. Yet, while the music is intrinsic to the story, it never overwhelms the main narrative. While musicians will appreciate the knowing details (Galloway is herself a trained musician, I believe), you do not need to be a musician to appreciate this novel. Augmenting the reading with a recording of Clara?s compositions and a recital of Chamisso?s lyrical poetry turned the book group discussion into a real evening of culture.

A worthy Scottish Saltire Book of Year 2002 and my personal Book of the Year 2006.

[Frinzer]

Just found this review
I have only read her debut novel
and love it to bits
but have stopped reading her for whatever reason
will order this 'un asap.

[soineeLom]

Read her Foreign Parts back in the mid-90s and really liked it. She's a fine writer.

Thanks for the recommendation. I kinda lost track of her.

[GohJHM9k]

Galloway can't write fast enough for me. She published volume one of her memoirs on Monday. Here's my review:



This Is Not About Me
ISBN: 978-1847080615
Published by Granta
UK Publication Date 1.9.2008 (Pre-released at the Edinburgh Book Festival 23.08.2008)
It’s been too long since the release of Clara. (6 years!) So, when news filtered through that Janice Galloway was releasing something new at the EBF, it was a foregone conclusion that I would be there, would purchase it and that everything could go hang until I had read it. Thus the Galloway event became my last event. Nothing could possibly follow it.
Janice Galloway

How right I was. The wow factor started the moment Galloway entered the auditorium. Dolled up to the nines in 1950’s garb - lino-piercing stilletos, fishnet tights, a loud floral confection of a frock, black lace gloves (removed for the reading), single-string pearl necklace, long flowing tresses and immaculate makeup- she had come dressed in homage to Cora, her elder sister. Cora, the woman-hating, man-loving bully and the beast, who declares “there is no excuse for an ugly woman” in this the first volume of her memoirs. The child, Janice, has an inferiority complex, inheriting her looks from her father. However, Cora’s lessons in dolling oneself up, have taken - Galloway, in working class parlance, had scrubbed up well!
The entrance grabbed the audience’s attention and the 30-minute reading that followed held it spellbound as a door opened on Galloway’s unpromising childhood in Saltcoats, Ayrshire. Living alone with her mother, who had left her husband preferring the loneliness of life without him to the loneliness of life with him. Sharing a small cubby-hole of a room with her mother, until Cora returned, abandoning her husband and son. The stuff of deprivation and rural poverty but told with humour that evidences Galloway’s refusal to slip into the mentality of victimhood.
The villain of the piece, Cora (it’s no accident that the memoir is published after her death) doesn’t “do domestic”. The mother does. Fetching and carrying and being put on by her eldest daughter and accepting servitude and abuse that she wouldn’t accept from her husband. On the dustjacket the child, Janice, sits between a caterer (her mother) and a warrior (her sister), observing, deciding on which side of the fence she will land.
The volume was originally planned to conclude at the end of her teenage years. Yet, using photographs and anecdotes from people known to her, Galloway found herself on page 53 at the age of four. I find this amazing, considering I have no memories prior to the age of 4 (1st memory being the assassination of JFK). “Is it memory? Is it fiction” was one question from the audience. Galloway said she honestly didn’t know. Most of the text is prompted by photographs. Galloway spoke on a photograph taken at the age of 3. She is sitting on a bike, a stuffed dove on her shoulders, a backdrop of Austria behind her. The setup indicative of how her mother wanted to make things appear as though they were better off. What is interesting is that beyond the photograph on the dustjacket, there are no others included in the book. It’s as though the reader is being asked to choose between the fiction and the fact.
In the best traditions of literary fiction, there is clearly a theme running throughout. The confusion, terror and absurdity of not knowing during childhood. The child, Janice, is an observer. Her narrative voice limited by inexperience, recording the events but not able to put flesh to the motivations of the adults in her life. This must have called for strong discipline by the adult Galloway, who with the benefit of experience and hindsight must have been sorely tested to impute motive and justification to the characters and to insert her own emotional responses to the events. The fact that she has taken pains to expunge her adult thoughts proves that the book really isn’t about her but is a documentary of a world without men in a time when men were the breadwinners.
It’s extraordinary. Richard Holloway, who chaired the event, started by listing the awards Galloway has already won for her fiction. Introducing this book, he said: “I’ll eat my mitre, if this book doesn’t sweep up more prizes”. I sincerely hope it sweeps up everything for which it is eligible and I wish fervently that Galloway doesn’t keep me waiting another 6 years for volume 2.