PIANO MUSIC FOR FOUR HANDS
by Roger Grenier & translated by Alice Kaplan
A marvel of brevity, this superb 1991 novel by the French author of Another November (and many others as yet untranslated) encapsulates the fate of a small French village in the conflicted figure of Michel Mailhoc, a failed musician who teaches his young grandniece Emma to become the successful concert pianist he is not meant to be. Grenier subtly connects Michel’s various missteps and failings—as artist, lover, and man—with the major events of the half-century stretching from WWI through France’s war in Algeria, while also suggestively linking him with the doomed romantic-tragic figure of Robert Schumann. A big little novel, in every way.