The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst

Obviously the notes have to be right. But they're just a path to the music."~from The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst

Schubert knew he was dying when he wrote his B-flat major sonata. The piece was going to be Susannah's reentry into her lapsed career as a concert pianist. Her early gift had been set aside when she became a wife and mother. Now it was time to put music a priority in her life. Especially as there was a chance of being on a CD of composers who had died young.

But Susannah's little finger was not as responsive as it should be and a doctor delivered the horrible news: she had Dupuytren's contracture, and no one could predict how quickly it would progress or how severe it would become. There was no cure, and few treatments available.  

Susannah would not to listen to the doctors, or her husband, and merely wait and see what developed. She would do everything to make her comeback a success and to prevent another sidelining of her career. Misha Dichter had overcome Dupuytren's. So would she.

I loved how the story is filled with music, composers, and the stories of the challenges they faced. I remember hearing some in concert, like Alicia de Larrocha and Vladamir Horowitz. The author is a serious amateur pianist and understands what she is writing about, and it shows. Susannah's search for just the right piano with the right touch struck home; I always had a challenge when I played a piano not my own. 

When Susannah met her future husband Aaron he bonded with her father over Thomas Kuhn. I loved this reference! I had read Kuhn's book Structure of Scientific Revolutions in a Poly Sci class in my early college career. 

Now, Susannah's father is losing his memory and will need to find Assisted Living soon. With her dad, preparing for her upcoming concert, her teenage son going his own way, and her husband trusting her to take care of all the domestic duties she had always been responsible for, the stress is building.

Aaron was the logical thinker, the scientist. Susannah was the creative one, the one who could speak through music. They had always relied on each other's strengths to balance. Now, by not listening to her husband's advice, a wedge had appeared between them. She had broken the unspoken contract; would their marriage survive it?

The Sound Between the Notes has great depth into human nature and family connections, including Susannah's feelings and relationships with her adoptive parents and biological family. The climax is dramatic and the resolution satisfying. Readers of women's fiction will enjoy this novel. Many of us will recognize the challenges of how changing marital roles require a paradigm shift that some couples overcome and others can not.

I previous read the author's novel The Queen of the Owls.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Sound Between The Notes
by Barbara Linn Probst
She Writes Press
Pub Date : April 6. 2021 
ISBN: 9781647420123
paperback $16.95 (USD)

from the publisher

The highly anticipated new novel from the multiple award-winning author of Queen of the Owls . . .

What if you had a second chance at the very thing you thought you’d renounced forever? How steep a price would you be willing to pay?

Susannah’s career as a pianist has been on hold for nearly sixteen years, ever since her son was born. An adoptee who’s never forgiven her birth mother for not putting her first, Susannah vowed to put her own child first, no matter what. And she did.

But now, suddenly, she has a chance to vault into that elite tier of “chosen” musicians. There’s just one problem: somewhere along the way, she lost the power and the magic that used to be hers at the keyboard. She needs to get them back. Now.

Her quest—what her husband calls her obsession—turns out to have a cost Susannah couldn’t have anticipated. Even her hand betrays her, as Susannah learns that she has a progressive hereditary disease that’s making her fingers cramp and curl—a curse waiting in her genes, legacy of a birth family that gave her little else. As her now-or-never concert draws near, Susannah is catapulted back to memories she’s never been able to purge—and forward, to choices she never thought she would have to make.

Told through the unique perspective of a musician, The Sound Between the Notes draws the reader deeper and deeper into the question Susannah can no longer silence: Who am I, and where do I belong?

Advance Praise

“The climax, on the night of her performance, is a tour de force steeped in suspense, and Susannah’s subsequent revelations are satisfying and authentic. A sensitive, astute exploration of artistic passion, family, and perseverance.”—Kirkus Reviews

 “As soaring as the music it so lovingly describes, poignantly human, and relatable to anyone who’s ever wondered if it’s too late for their dream, The Sound Between the Notes is an exploration of our vulnerability to life’s timing and chance occurrences that influence our decisions, for better or worse. Probst creates her trademark intelligent suspense as Susannah, an adoptee trying for a mid-life resurrection of an abandoned music career, confronts lifelong questions of who she is. A story that speaks to our universal need to have someone who believes in us unequivocally, and how that person had better be ourselves.”—Ellen Notbohm, award-winning author of The River by Starlight

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn/ Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst

The library book club read in October was A. J. Finn's suspense thriller The Woman in the Window.

I have read several suspense novels in the past and am pretty much over them. I dreaded reading 488 pages! Luckily, the chapters are short, there is lots of blank space, and I read it in a few days.

Of course, there is an unreliable narrator. Not one but two 'unexpected' twists. A murder, threat of death, mental instability, and all the stock noir memes. Finn saturates the novel with references to the classic, black and white, noir movies, the narrator's obsession. 

I thought it overwritten, too many cute descriptive words. And I early guessed the real villian.

Over all, the book club readers said it was a quick easy read that kept their interest, full of the expected thriller twists. One thought it contrived. Entertainment, if nothing more. 

Maybe. One reader appreciated the insight into agoraphobia. 

And yet the book spurred a great discussion. Was too much space given to Anna's drinking or movie watching? Did we feel sympathy or disgust by her behavior? What spurred her self-destructive behavior? How soon did we predict the real villian, if at all? We talked about bad parents, red herrings, and how familiar Anna's homebound life felt during COVID-19.

Readers did find the book very cinematic with detailed descriptions that brought the book to life, and learning a movie was made of the book, we were all interested in viewing it.

*****

The Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst came to my attention on Facebook's Breathless Bubbles & Books page.

The main character, Elizabeth, struggles with her dissertation on Georgia O'Keefe, trying to connect her time in Hawaii as a transition point in her art. 

Elizabeth's marriage lacks physical passion and emotional intimacy. She finds herself attracted to a photographer and together they discuss O'Keefe and her modeling in the nude for Stieglitz. She accepts his challenge to recreate the photographs with him as a way of coming to better understand O'Keefe and her motivation for modeling, if she was a co-creator in the art.

Plot-wise, the novel felt inevitable and unsurprising. The real interest is in Elizabeth's internal struggle for self-realization. She and her sister were early pigeonholed into narrow roles. Their husbands keep them confined to those roles, Elizabeth the 'owly' intellectual, her sister the fun and pretty one. Elizabeth is a good teacher and she believes in her work and can defend it. She has to learn to believe in her beauty, free herself to find real love, and take charge of her destiny.

Much of the novel's space is centered on O'Keefe's art and life, which I did enjoy.

The sexual issues are addressed with great honesty, from the marriage bed's coolness to Elizabeth's intense, unrequited attraction.

The novel is well written and an enjoyable read. Fans of women's fiction, stories of young women's self-actualization, or the art world will enjoy this one.

I purchased an ebook.