Mr. K’s Sonata
After another bad day at her Idaho junior high school, capped off with a scolding from her orchestra teacher, thirteen-year-old Jodi makes her lonely way home, only to be captivated by the distant sound of a violin. Curious, she soon makes the acquaintance of the elderly violinist: Michal Kaszubinski, the titular “Mr. K.” As the two strike up a friendship, cemented by their shared love of music, the widowed Michal tells Jodi his own story. It opens in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, where the teenage Michal, drawn to Karina, the daughter of a Jewish worker in his father’s factory, determines to save her at all costs when danger looms.
On the whole, I enjoyed this novel, with its sympathetic, yet flawed protagonists and compelling plotlines. While Jodi, even though saddled with a feckless mother and obnoxious classmates, doesn’t face the sort of stakes that Michal and Karina do, the novel’s anti-bullying message is an important one, especially for the young adult audience at which this tale is aimed. My one complaint was the ending, which struck me as abrupt and somewhat unpolished. Still, this is a worthy addition to the pantheon of novels set at least partly in the Second World War.
