The Page Turner - David Leavitt

**** Page Turner in name and in fact

One thing which I was pleasantly surprised by in this book is the extreme beauty of the prose. I came across it by accident and I was struck by the wonderful sound that seemed to come from the written words. I must admit that this aspect, coupled with the fact that in the particular moment when I read it I was just looking for such a reading, could replace something else that I liked less, including the plot that was not exactly in my comfort zone, even if, going forward with the reading, I found it at times very funny.
The character of the mother of the protagonist is a wee bit stereotypical and over the top, to stretch a bit into becoming two-dimensional, like all women in this novel, while the male characters are much more credible.
Perhaps another aspect that left me puzzled was the feeling of incompleteness that I got at the end of the reading. There are many opportunities to take advantage of to develop a much longer and more complex story, but just when things start to come to life, the story ends, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. I wondered what would happen to the protagonist and the other main characters. I wondered what was the motivation behind the book, what the author had really wanted to tell. I got the impression that he did nothing but offer us a glimpse into a world, that of classical music (and all human affairs that go around it), but he didn’t really intend to show us a path that would go towards an end.
There is also to say that sometimes it is better to end a story without completing it instead of giving it an ending running into banality. Also for this reason, the extremely open ending, although on the one hand it seems to be a lack, perhaps could become valuable.
Of course the title is very fitting: it is a real “page turner”, that is a book from which is difficult to break away and that you can read in a flash, because it isn’t very long.


The Page Turner on Amazon.com.

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