The Sound between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst is beautifully-written, engrossing, and emotional journey through a woman’s search for her own identify. Throughout the novel, Susannah’s choices have dramatic effects upon her family. Adopted at birth, the protagonist Susannah, has an adoptive mother who tells her she’s a special child, chosen to be their daughter. This woman sacrifices to give her daughter the education needed to become a great classical pianist. Despite having such a loving family, Susannah once she’s off at college, journeys back to Texas to discover her roots. Eventually, she gives up that search, but when she marries and becomes pregnant, she feels she has to do better by her son. She gives up her career as a promising musician to become a full-time mother.
As her son, James grows up, Susannah feels she can return to her former profession—only to discover she is having physical difficulties with playing a piece she’s played for ages. She soon learns that she has Dupuytren’s contracture, a progressive hereditary disease that causes the fingers to contract toward the palm of the hand. With this diagnosis, she becomes obsessed about her future and resumes her search for her Texas family.
The author is a musician, and her love of music pervades the book: the marvelous descriptions of not just the notes of music, but the fingering, and the way Susannah thinks of everything in terms of music. Overall, this is a lovely, nuanced book about motherhood, family, career, and loss.
With the compelling theme of adoption and loss, this book would be well read in the company of Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love by Marylee MacDonald. Like Susannah, MacDonald was a “chosen” child, yet playing against those feelings tied up in her adoption, is the sixteen-year-old MacDonald suffers when she gives up her own child at age sixteen.
********************
The Sound between the Notes is available through:
********************
This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
