What do You think about Chamber Music (1993)?
This is a sad, melancholy, and beautiful story about a woman named named Caroline, who lived most of her life alone. Caroline's father died when she was young, leaving a bereft mother who spent all of her time in mourning for her lost love. When Caroline met a young man in Boston, an aspiring American composer and respected conductor of symphonies, she looked forward to a life of love...They moved to Germany to their mother's house, where Caroline learned that mother and son had shared the same oversized canopied bed before they were married. In time, Caroline learned that her husband had an affair with another male musician. When Caroline and Robert moved back to Boston, and then to a farm in Saratoga, New York, Caroline devoted her life to Robert's public image, living "quietly" alone, for fear of disturbing her husband's creativity. They lived together, sleeping in the very same oversized canopied bed, yet Caroline remained very much alone. Robert contracted syphilis. A young woman named Anna came to be his aide and caretaker. Caroline and Anna became close friends. "The deep emotional freeze in which I had lived for so long, the ice age of my heart, would take a long time to melt, even beside the glowing flesh and warm heart of Anna Baehr." Robert died in his oversized canopy bed. "I mourned my wasted life in Robert's service, I grieved for his long absence from my conscious life, and mine, I think, from his." Anna and Caroline became lovers, residing in the very same bed. Until Anna's death, Caroline had finally found a partner to love, sharing each others physical and emotional needs. An exquisite "memoir!"
—Marcy
Caroline is ninety and looks back on her life, especially her married life with a world famous music composer. Very matter of fact and written starkly the emotional feel of Caroline's feelings come through very strongly without the gushing sentiment.Robert is a clever man but with many eccentricities that the naive Caroline as a young woman cannot see and does not understand till very much later. She adopts an attitude of servitude to him, giving in to his needs, his orders and most importantly his way of life. Everything seems subject to this.Caroline goes from a sheltered childhood to this life as a wife - a wife more in name than in anything else. Her passionate feelings only surface with the finding of a companion who comes in as a nurse when Robert is dying and this relationship is the only bright spark in her life. Caroline comes to life during this phase of her life story and the contrast of this short period as against her previous life seems so bright and vivid as against the dullness of all that goes before.A bit slow at the beginning this is a story you have to persevere at, the rewards of reading this is right at the end.
—Mystica
Aged 90, at the end of a long and often turbulent life, Caroline Maclaren decides to tell her life story, the story of her marriage to a famous musician, her loneliness within that marriage, the artists’ colony that she founds, and her ultimate fulfilment in a new relationship. It’s a straightforward narrative told in a straightforward way, and none the worse for that. It’s a realistic portrayal of a life and a marriage, more so as it’s based on the real life American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian. Grumbach tells us however that the details of their lives are conjecture or invention and that the book is indeed a work of fiction. Nevertheless real people and events feature in the book and that gives it an added authenticity. I thoroughly enjoyed this compelling and often moving novel and am delighted to have discovered Doris Grumbach, a writer I’d never heard of before.
—Mandy
