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Wintermelodie. Roman (1930)

von Rosamond Lehmann

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MitgliederRezensionenBeliebtheitDurchschnittliche BewertungDiskussionen
1967137,536 (3.66)55
A seductive new stranger becomes the symbol of everything two married women secretly long for in this richly imagined novel by one of the most distinguished writers of the twentieth century Thirty-four-year-old Grace Fairfax lives a dull, conventional existence with her dull, conventional husband, Tom, in a dreary manufacturing town in the North of England. A year ago, when a fortune-teller told her that her life lacked will and purpose, she wasn't surprised. Every day the same predictable routine--it's a wonder she doesn't go mad.   Then Hugh Miller and his sister, Clare, descend on the town. Clare is young and beautiful. Hugh seems to possess everything lacking in Grace's life: passion, vitality, and most important, the freedom to do as he pleases. Grace's best friend, Norah MacKay, isn't immune to the handsome stranger's charms, either. Married to Gerald, a curmudgeonly university professor, the mother of two has her own fantasies of desire and liberation. But Hugh isn't the man Grace and Norah imagine him to be.   In this story of two strangers who cast an otherworldly enchantment on an entire town and its inhabitants, A Note in Music presents an intensely moving portrait of marriage--its disappointments, joys, jealousies, fears, and loneliness, and the truths that remain unspoken. … (mehr)
Kürzlich hinzugefügt vonHimalmitra, TCCenter, wrrcdavis, Nic_C, Blandyna62, nikolahall, SueJBeard, LExode
NachlassbibliothekenErnest Hemingway
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  SueJBeard | Feb 14, 2023 |
The characters in this novel are all quite unsatisfied with their lives: they keep going because there doesn't seem to be an alternative. For some months, their lives are brightened a little by a young man working in his grandfather's business. For the others, he comes across a bright if a bit restless young man, but inside is another person who doesn't know what to do with his life. For a book that focuses on the ordinary, this one kept me reading effortlessly. ( )
  mari_reads | Oct 13, 2021 |
Grace Fairfax is ten years into her marriage to Tom, and beginning to feel the strain of having perhaps married the wrong person, and certainly a person who does not meet her emotional needs. Her friend Norah appears to have been more successful, with both a husband and two children, but she mourns the loss of her first love in the war. Both women have buried hurt and disappointment for so long, they no longer realize life could be any different.

When Norah’s friend Clare comes to town and Clare’s brother Hugh begins working in Tom’s office, Norah and Grace are suddenly aware of the lack of “spark” in their lives. Hugh and Clare are young and fashionable, and seemingly without a care in the world. Grace becomes infatuated with Hugh, and tests her independence by insisting on taking a summer holiday without Tom. Norah immerses herself in her children and community work, and fails to see her husband Gerald enjoying Clare’s attentions.

The novel unfolds slowly through the inner monologues of the principal characters. The reader knows more about each character than is known to the others. I frequently found myself wanting to intervene and make the characters talk to each other and sort out their problems. Thankfully Rosamond Lehmann eventually takes care of all that, and in a way that is both realistic and fitting. ( )
1 abstimmen lauralkeet | Apr 16, 2018 |
Rosamond Lehmann is certainly one of my favourite writers (the list is pretty long I admit). I came to her in a roundabout way, I first read a biography about her by the eminent biographer Selina Hastings back in 2009. It set me on a course to read everything she had written, and now, apart from a play she wrote in the 1930s I have. A Note in Music was the last of her books I had left to read, and I am sad there are no more. I suppose I shall have to begin re-reading (there is in fact one novel I have read twice). She is a quite exceptional writer, a fascinating woman who was very much a part of the Bloomsbury group.

A Note in Music was Rosamond Lehmann’s second novel. Her first novel Dusty Answer published three years earlier was an enormous success, and A Note in Music is a worthy successor to that extraordinary debut.

This is a gloriously nuanced novel, a portrait of marriage and the disappointments of an ordinary middle-class life.

Grace Fairfax is thirty-four, childless following a still-birth some years earlier, she is married to the dull, hard-working, conventional Tom. Living in a dull northern town, her life is one of unvaried routine. However, Grace has a glorious inner life, a woman of imagination, in tune with the countryside she loves so much, she knows herself capable of great love, and still misses the southern country of her youth. A year earlier, a fortune teller had told Grace that her life lacked purpose, Grace wasn’t surprised.

“The country haunted her still, she said to herself: not a day passed without bringing some picture remembered or imagined. Dawn and sunset were not in these skies, behind the slate roofs and red brick chimneys of the residential quarter – but in her mind’s eye, over country spaces; and spring and autumn still made her sick for home. How many times had she not thought of the summer evening when a bird had sung in the poor lilac tree in the front patch?… But that would never happen again, now that the trams came to the end of the avenue.”

Norah MacKay is Grace’s best friend, she too a woman living a somewhat disappointed life. Married to bad tempered university professor; Gerald, mother to two boys, Norah once knew great passion with Jimmy – lost in the war.

“It was such a great love, she whispered to herself: how could it be (for the thousandth time) that it had not availed to save him? That was his fault…so like him…just as everything was coming right at last. In spite of her, he would not, could not care to save himself. To her passionate feminine instinct for life he had opposed his masculine indifference; and somehow, in the general destruction of mankind by man, he had disappeared with a smile and a shrug, and defeated her.”

When brother and sister Clare and Hugh Miller arrive, temporarily, in the town they bring with them the sense of another way of life – a freedom, and independence that both Grace and Norah recognise and respond to similarly. Clare, an old friend of Norah’s stays with the Mackays for a time, infecting even the dour Gerald with the promise of unimagined possibilities. Hugh is passionate, exudes vitality, freedom and the ability to do just as he pleases. Clare is young, beautiful and irresistibly unconstrained. Hugh, the reader realises is perhaps not quite all Grace and Norah think he is, and while his charisma is not as obvious to the reader at times, (and I think this is deliberate – as it shows how we can respond most extraordinarily to the almost anyone if our imaginations can make them into something else) there is no doubting his effect upon Grace in particular.

Grace sees Hugh first when she in the cinema with Tom, the cinema one of the few pleasures in her life, has evolved into part of a weekly expected routine. Over the coming months Grace meets Hugh only a handful of times, yet each moment is imprinted on her mind, as she develops a gentle unspoken love for the young man who represents all that her life lacks. There is an unforgettable afternoon of tennis, fishing and summer fun at the house of Norah’s relatives – that seems to live long in the memories of those who were there.

Another character we meet is Pansy – a young woman living with her brother. She makes her living as both a hairdresser and a prostitute. She too, drawn to Hugh, who she met at the local dance hall, seeing in him that promise of another life. Pansy, engaging most of her energies in remaining respectable, striving to fool her neighbours into believing she is not what she is (as ever, in these cases, they are not fooled). When Grace goes away by herself on a holiday in the countryside – Tom, miserable, unable to cope, meets Pansy at the fair.

A Note in Music is quite simply a beautiful novel, exquisitely written, moving and revealing, it’s the kind of novel I love best. ( )
1 abstimmen Heaven-Ali | Dec 3, 2017 |
A Note in Music was Rosamond Lehmann's second book and a departure from her wildly successful first, Dusty Answer In this one she looks carefully into the lives of Grace and Tom Fairfax and Norah and Gerald MacKay, all past the first flush of youth and settling quietly into unsatisfactory, unhappy lives. Grace had a baby and a puppy, both of whom died; she seems to regret the loss of the puppy more bitterly. Norah had been the victim in a relationship with an exciting, unfaithful man. She thinks of him and her sons with more attention than she gives to her husband.
Into their midst Hugh Miller appears briefly with his lovely sister Clare. Hugh is younger and Grace sees him as everything that is light and refreshing and hopeful and good. Clare is radiant and Gerald moves to her light. Five of them have one day together that changes internal lives. Eventually, the married couples achieve some readiness to embrace their chosen lot.
Beyond the central relationships other interesting characters emerge and go back to their lives. Hugh has had a homosexual affair that ended badly. A young prostitute, Pansy, makes her way in and out of their lives. The Fairfax's cook is pregnant. Ms. Lehmann also takes time out for descriptive set pieces as seasons and settings change. This lushness is a bit overpowering for my taste, but must be a fine example of its kind. She also attempts to explore the whole mystery of life as it underlies the commonplace present. This exploration comes in the musing of the central characters and does not feel out of place because the insights remain in character.
All in all this is very successful middlebrow writing, and I enjoyed it as a middlebrow reader should. ( )
5 abstimmen LizzieD | Aug 23, 2011 |
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» Andere Autoren hinzufügen (3 möglich)

AutorennameRolleArt des AutorsWerk?Status
Rosamond LehmannHauptautoralle Ausgabenberechnet
Gertler, MarkUmschlagillustrationCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
Watts, JanetEinführungCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt

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'But the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past, and what is to come.'
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She was dressing for dinner. Next door, she heard Tom splashing in his bath, and singing over and over again the refrain of one of his three tunes.
Rosamond Lehmann herself calls A Note in Music 'a totally forgotten book'. (Introduction)
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A seductive new stranger becomes the symbol of everything two married women secretly long for in this richly imagined novel by one of the most distinguished writers of the twentieth century Thirty-four-year-old Grace Fairfax lives a dull, conventional existence with her dull, conventional husband, Tom, in a dreary manufacturing town in the North of England. A year ago, when a fortune-teller told her that her life lacked will and purpose, she wasn't surprised. Every day the same predictable routine--it's a wonder she doesn't go mad.   Then Hugh Miller and his sister, Clare, descend on the town. Clare is young and beautiful. Hugh seems to possess everything lacking in Grace's life: passion, vitality, and most important, the freedom to do as he pleases. Grace's best friend, Norah MacKay, isn't immune to the handsome stranger's charms, either. Married to Gerald, a curmudgeonly university professor, the mother of two has her own fantasies of desire and liberation. But Hugh isn't the man Grace and Norah imagine him to be.   In this story of two strangers who cast an otherworldly enchantment on an entire town and its inhabitants, A Note in Music presents an intensely moving portrait of marriage--its disappointments, joys, jealousies, fears, and loneliness, and the truths that remain unspoken. 

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