** An INDIENEXT notable for May **
“Blackwell’s prose works like a symphony… the book is ultimately an orchestra of its own, beautifully composed and richly textured.” - NewPages.com
“You can read Elise Blackwell’s An Unfinished Score as if you were listening to a great string quartet: there’s a harmony that exists between her characters, and a complexity that allows for unexpected - intriguing - results. Blackwell faultlessly connects classical music to her exploration of loss and relationships, and she’s an excellent storyteller, combining tension and thoughtfulness. Not since Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music have I read such appealing music fiction.”—Laura Kuechenmeister Bookworks Bookstore, Albuquerque
“I pushed to sign Elise Blackwell to the Alabama Book Festival because she’s just the sort of writer these events are designed to introduce audiences to: literary and yet accessible, challenging but not alienating, uplifting without pandering. A lot of readers crave sophisticated, complex characters instead of stereotypes. They want fictional people whose actions offer a way of assessing the way we live now, and for me that’s what Elise’s novels do. To my thinking, her work has the same broad appeal as Anita Shreve’s and Carol Shields’. Book festivals are great opportunities to bring these sorts of deserving writers onto the radar of audiences who might not otherwise know about them. I have a feeling readers who come out to meet Elise and learn about An Unfinished Score on April 17 will walk away saying, ‘Why am I only now discovering this person?’”— Kirk Curnutt, author of Dixie Noir and Breathing Out the Ghost, and Fiction Selection Committee, “Alabama Book Festival”
“At once poignant and mesmerizing, “an Unfinished Score” is a must read—especially for those with a musical bent” - Susan Diffenderfer,
Tall Tales Books, Atlanta, GA
“Beautiful….such depth…such emotion…heartwrenching and yet, peaceful….”—Urban Bachelorette
I’m dying to tell you that An Unfinished Score most emphatically did not disappoint me. Certainly the most captivating—and, to be direct, the best—novel I’ve read in many ages! I think Elise Blackwell is right up there. As in, right at the top. I want to read everything else she’s ever written. Every word was like a perfectly-chosen ingredient in an elaborate and memorable meal, and, as I read, the novel was my world. Could a reader ask for more? I don’t think so.
In other words, I liked it. – Robin Dunn, St. Johns College Bookstore
ELISE BLACKWELL
AN UNFINISHED SCORE
As she prepares dinner for her husband and their extended family, Suzanne hears on the radio that a jetliner has crashed and her lover is dead.
Alex Elling was a renowned orchestra conductor. Suzanne is a concert violist, long unsatisfied with her marriage to a composer whose music turns emotion into thought. Now, more alone than she’s ever been, she must grieve secretly. But as complex as that effort is, it pales with the arrival of Alex’s widow, who blackmails her into completing the score for Alex’s unfinished viola concerto.
As Suzanne struggles to keep her double life a secret from her husband, from her best friend, and from the other members of her quartet, she is consumed by memories of a rich love affair saturated with music. Increasingly manipulated by her lover’s widow and tormented by the concerto’s many layers, Suzanne realizes she may lose everything she’s spent her life working for.
A story of love, loss, sex, class, and betrayal, this psychologically compelling novel explores the ways that artists’ lives and work interact, the nature of relationships among women as friends and competitors, and what it means to make a life of art.
$14.95 / $15.95 CAN | FICTION Paperback | 6x9 | 272 pages
April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60953-039-6 | Carton Quantity: 24
EISBN: 978-1-93607-187-6
As she prepares dinner for her husband and their extended family, Suzanne hears on the radio that a jetliner has crashed and her lover is dead. Alex Elling was a renowned orchestra conductor. Suzanne is a concert violist, long unsatisfied with her marriage to a composer whose music turns emotion into thought. Now, more alone than she’s ever been, she must grieve secretly. But as complex as that effort is, it pales with the arrival of Alex’s widow, who blackmails her into completing the score for Alex’s unfinished viola concerto. As Suzanne struggles to keep her double life a secret from her husband, from her best friend, and from the other members of her quartet, she is consumed by memories of a rich love affair saturated with music. Increasingly manipulated by her lover’s widow and tormented by the concerto’s many layers, Suzanne realizes she may lose everything she’s spent her life working for. A story of love, loss, sex, class, and betrayal, this psychologically compelling novel explores the ways that artists’ lives and work interact, the nature of relationships among women as friends and competitors, and what it means to make a life of art.
Elise Blackwell is the author of four previous novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, and An Unfinished Score. Her short stories and essays have been widely published, and her work has been named to various best-of-the-year lists, translated into several languages, and adapted for the stage as well as a song by The Decemberists. She teaches at the University of South Carolina, where she is also organizer and host of The Open Book.