Rebecca Makkai has yet to fail me. This is a wonderful collection of short stories, all of which were previously published in journals. Thinking back on the title after I finished the book, I can see that music was an important element in most of the stories (a cellist starting a new quartet in her home, an elderly woman who used to sing in the opera, a composer searching for traditional songs in a country ruled by a dictator, a nine-fingered violinist, J.S. Bach resurrected and struggling in the modern world), and although none were actually set in a war, the same elderly woman recounts how she was spared being sent to Auschwitz, we learn that the violinist lost his finger to torture in a Communist prison, and many characters are fighting smaller personal "wars": the AIDS crisis, a partner's infidelity, the loss of a loved one, etc.

If you love short stories, don't miss this beautifully written, multi-toned, and always surprising and moving collection. ( )

I read this collection on a long flight. Sometimes I find it challenging to read a collection of stories in one sitting. With some collections there is a sameness that makes it sort of wearying to read one story after another; (after a reading a bunch of Raymond Carver stories I either wanted a drink or to check into AA;); and some short stories while skillfully written require so much work to understand (I have my limitations) that it is just not fun to read more than one at a time.

But Makkai’s collection was really fun to read. I’ve met her and she’s a skilled writer and also really smart, which isn’t always helpful for a writer, but she pulls it off. These stories covered a wide range of topics from music to academia to mysticism to reality shows (my favorite). Many of the stories were on subjects I have a profound level of ignorance about (classical music) and while I am sure I missed some of the subtext, I was immediately engaged in every one of them.

No surprise, The New Yorker reviewer says it better than I can: “Ricocheting from the war-torn twentieth century to the reality-show-rich present, the stories in this impressive collection feature characters buffeted by fate – or is it mere happenstance?...Our sense of history is probed, too, not without humor.”

It’s a great collection. Highly recommended. ( )

I loved Makkai's last novel, The Great Believers and immediately wanted to seek out her earlier work. I hit the bulls-eye with this story collection from 2015. The writing is excellent but I really admire how she weaves her Romanian family history into these tales, both past and present. I especially liked the story of a prized circus elephant that keels over on Main Street and transforms the town. Terrific collection. ( )

I didn't love the early stories in this book. Some of them felt a little too clever (a weird stumbling block for me, as I tend to like clever), and some of them felt, I don't know, just a little half baked. The final three stories made the book worthwhile, though. I'm undecided on whether I'll read more by Makkai or not. Her stories have been widely published in respected magazines, but the hit/miss ratio in this collection was pretty low for me, and it'd take a pretty spectacular novel to pull me in. I feel like the collection here was generally stronger than its constituent stories. ( )

The author wrote these stories over the course of 13 years, but they feel like they were designed to be together. Some of them are set in our current era and take on contemporary topics, like honesty in terms of reality TV, while others are set around the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Some of the shortest stories appear to come from the author's family, and I liked the way these mini stories were interspersed in the collection. It made it almost feel like the author's well-designed story scrapbook. I also really enjoyed the way she writes about artists and musicians -- she well captures the self-serving aspects of people in the arts as well as the escape and catharsis they offer listeners and viewers. ( )