Rose, M.J.: Sheet Music

Ballantine Books © 2003, 336 pages [amazon]

Journalist Justine Pagett's career is riding on a single story, the biography she has been invited to write of the enigmatic composer and conductor Sophie DeLyon, who runs a selective school for musicians--Euphonia--on 150 acres of prime real estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. By the time Justine arrives at Euphonia to meet her subject, however, DeLyon has gone missing and Justine has been warned off the story by a series of threats: someone, it is clear, does not want the truth about Sophie to come out. Just what that truth is and what has happened to DeLyon make for an interesting enough novel. But the bare bones of the tale aren't the half of it. Sheet Music is a mystery wrapped in the lush descriptions and broader themes of a piece of literary fiction. The story is awash in musical and gastronomic details--Justine is the daughter of chefs--and it explores, often movingly, incapacitating grief and its aftermath and the sometimes ugly "other" that each of us hides from the outside world.

Tags: book reviews, books, M.J. Rose