Songs of Triumphant Love
I'd already read Jessica Duchen's Hungarian Dances and very much enjoyed it. When I started the research for my 2nd novel I had stumbled upon Jessica on Twitter and thought, as an author and music writer, she may be able to point me in the direction of some good novels that featured opera singers, so fired off a quick Tweet. I soon got several replies mentioning books she thought I should read, plus "my latest, Songs of Triumphant Love, is about an opera singer." So I ordered a copy.
Having read the blurb I instantly worried that Jessica had already beaten me to it and written the book I had in mind ("feel the fear and do it anyway!" she was kind enough to encourage). Only one way to find out - I started reading.
Now, first up, there are two things wrong with this book - neither is the fault of the author. The first is the jacket design which, while beautiful, is entirely intended to make the book look as close to The Time Traveller's Wife as possible. The second is the blurb. I know its hard to sum up a novel in a few words but the summary on the back cover really doesn't do justice to the breadth and depth of this book. If I'd picked it up in a bookshop, never having heard of Jessica, I'd probably have put it back, thinking it was likely to be a bit...well...floppy!
No so. This is a wonderful book that somehow manages to do what a good book should; it takes a personal story, complicates it with inter-personal relationships then offsets the whole thing against the extra-personal to connect with the wider world. Songs of Triumphant Love pokes a hole in the fabric of the universe (like the crack in Terri's front wall or the rip in her silk dress) and lets us peer in, allowing the reader one of those rare moments that can only be achieved by art in which we see that (as Walt Whitman would have us believe in Song of Myself) we are all part of a bigger picture and nothing is in or of itself alone.
Cracks (in walls, dresses, sanity, voices) are a powerful image. As Leonard Cohen puts it "Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
I loved this book. I've realised that, while mine will probably have some overlap in terms of theme and setting, it's going to be a totally different novel and is worth writing for its own sake. It will, undoubtedly, be a better book than it would had I not read Songs of Triumphant Love.
Lovely post, and a remarkably clear and evocative summary in few words. I always end up blathering and saying things like "And then there's this really exciting bit about Rosenkavalier." And I've also had to talk several people past the blurb... might not have picked it up myself if not for recommendation from @ZerbinettasBlog.
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