I remember liking this author which is why I chose to read this book. It's a tale of co-dependency which goes wrong and luckily, Suzanne never realizes what her husband has done. There is lots of foreshadowing but what Philip has done is not fully revealed until near the end of the book. ( )

I chose to read this book because it was billed as a fictionalized version of the Joyce Hatto story. Joyce Hatto was a British pianist who spent most of her life in obscurity and poor health, but in her later years, she released many critically-acclaimed recordings of classical music. Critics marveled at her technique and versatility. How could such a great talent have been hidden for so long? Only after her death it was revealed that her husband, a recording engineer, had enhanced Hatto's recordings by splicing in passages played by other pianists. Was Hatto aware of what her husband did, and did she approve of his actions? Unfortunately, her opinion on the subject remains unknown.

In the afterward, Ms. Schwartz states that the Two-Part Inventions was inspired by the Hatto scandal. However, most of the novel is not about the plagiarism or its aftermath. Instead, we follow Suzanne, the Hatto character, through her girlhood as a naive child prodigy and her later musical education at Julliard. Suzanne is rather insipid and it's hard to care what happens to her. We also hear a lot about her husband Phil's dreary childhood and youth. There's nothing in the first two-thirds of the book that satisfactorily explains why these characters would be tempted by musical fraud. It isn't until the last section of this book (perhaps it should have been called Three-Part Invention--it is in three parts) that the scandal erupts and the story gets somewhat more involving. But by then, Suzanne is already dead, so she never has to deal with consequences of her husband's actions. Neither does Phil; the book ends before the musicians he plagiarised from can sue him. ( )