The Accompanist
Sonechka is a gifted, somewhat immature pianist chosen to be the accompanist to a self-indulgent soprano and her manager husband. Though she is taken from a life of poverty in post-Revolutionary Russia, her appreciation for her new existence of grandeur is bitter and never fully explained to the reader but for one short sentence. Sonechka quickly discovers her mentor Maria’s infidelity and again her outrage is unexplained. She shows no fondness for her new “family,” so many of her thoughts seem distorted at worst and undeveloped at best. Perhaps The Accompanist has lost its charm and power in the translation? It was a curious book, certainly one worth reading if only for the richness of the language and the slim peek at a turbulent Russia and its many layers of society during this era.
