Partita

Partita A Novel Barbara Kingsolver Hardcover FICTION/Literary A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK "Kingsolver’s magnificent Partita sings in the key of passion, yearning, and loss." — The Boston Globe From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead, a story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty. Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime. Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life. With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless, life-changing power of art. "Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature's masters. . . . A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement." - Kirkus (starred review) "Barbara Kingsolver has done it again. In this masterfully orchestrated novel, an unexpected call forces a once-ascendent pianist to revisit the affair that reshaped her youth and the career that vanished alongside it. . . . Partita refuses easy distinctions between destiny and choice, showing how class background, family damage, and thwarted ambition can keep shaping us long after we believe their power has faded." - Oprah Daily “[A] deeply wrenching novel. . . . Kingsolver understands that life can be an ingenious villain. Along with her decades-long environmentalism and her call for empathy and moral justice, her abiding theme is that we can survive the unsurvivable, which is fortunate because someone or something may be lurking nearby to make us prove it. Livia Cable, the Appalachia-bred narrator of Kingsolver’s new novel, Partita, is wry, resilient and as forthcoming a companion as you could ask for. . . . Kingsolver writes so transportingly about music and musicians. . .she takes on not just sexual obsession and classism, but also itchy what-ifs, human decency, the engulfing power of music and the butterfly effect of dreams deferred.” - The New York Times "Kingsolver presents an enrapturing, bri