Sensitively and poetically, this story deals with with what is often considered difficult subject matter - the concentration camp at Terezin / Theresienstadt, Los Alamos and the creation of the atomic bomb, as well as the fear of unveiling one's blocked memories and why the mind has shuttered them away.

Through the language of music theory, the primary character describes her understanding of the events of the 20th century which have affected her and her family. Her mother shares in this language called music and her father and husband, both scientists, do not appear to relate to her artistry and sensitivity. So much of her life's memories are a blur or even blocked from her conscience. Fragments come to the fore and her curiosity leads her to personal enlightenment.

For such a short story, there is much on which to chew and ponder. ( )

[Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com). I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.]

I've discussed here before the inherent challenge I feel about doing critical looks at Holocaust fiction -- that although you can't just stand up one day and say, "Okay, that's it, we have enough novels about the Holocaust now, and we really don't need anymore" (after all, the Holocaust is the very definition of a story that should be endlessly discussed until the end of time, simply so that the story is never forgotten), nonetheless it makes it very difficult as a literary critic to do an actual honest literary criticism of any particular new one, because the story is just so familiar by now, and the impetus to "never forget the past" can manytimes clash badly with the equally important impetus as an author to write an entertaining and thought-provoking three-act narrative story that is fresh and original. And so it is with Lisa Lenard-Cook's new Dissonance as well, although to her credit she at least attempts to approach the story in a new way; it's ostensibly the story of a contemporary piano teacher in Los Alamos, New Mexico, who mysteriously one day learns that she is the recipient in the will of an elderly Jewish composer she's never met, discovering that she has inherited a series of original songs on sheet paper that have never been performed and that the general public largely is not aware of, her quest to track down their origins taking her into the story of this elderly composer's time at the concentration camps as a youth. But that said, the book indeed suffers from the exact problem I'm talking about, that it was a chore to get through precisely because I already knew every single story beat that was going to happen well before I ever turned the next page, which is problematic when you're presenting your story as a mainstream novel instead of as a history textbook; and so I will do the wimpy thing I always do in these situations and simply give the book an exact middle-of-the-road score, because I am uncomfortable giving a piece of Holocaust fiction a score that's either too high or too low, even though Dissonance deserves them both simultaneously. This should all be kept in mind before you pick up a copy yourself.

Out of 10: 7.5 ( )

Don't be fooled by how short this novel is. It will tear at your heart strings in all the right ways. The language of this book is absolutely beautiful. While there are sections that seem slow, the narrative pulls you through.
There aren't many books I would read a second time, but this is one of them. ( )

I had mixed feelings about this book. The subject matter is important, the plot well mapped out, but I just never really engaged with any of the characters. I'm not sorry at all that I read it, but it was a slower read than I'd anticipated. ( )

Lisa Lenard-Cook’s Dissonance is a crafted and finely tuned novel. It is a slow burn, in the best sense: a patient rendering of character and a thoughtfully developed narrative. Lenard-Cook anchors the story using music theory as a device to make links and convey the emotions and motivations of her characters in overarching metaphor. It may be to the reader’s advantage to have some knowledge of music theory but for those who don't, concepts such as polytonality, consonance, dissonance, and cadence are conveyed as landscapes being revealed to the reader for the first time. Throughout the novel, there is an underlying rhythm of question and answer – call and response - the conflict between ‘complete’ and ‘unresolved’ cadences in the lives of the characters, the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices. It is conflict that goes to the heart of the human experience, a dialectic that has the potential to find resonance in the experience and emotional life of the reader. Dissonance is a novel that enriches, a love story, a narrative with historical scope and contemporary relevance. ( )