Dissonance

By Lisa Lenard-Cook

When Anna Kramer, a Los Alamos piano teacher, inherits the journals and scores of composer Hana Weissova, she is mystified by this bequest from a woman she does not know. Hana's music, however, soon begins to uncover forgotten emotions, while her journals, which begin in 1945 after she is released from a concentration camp, slowly reveal decades-old secrets that Anna and her family have kept buried. Dissonance is a quiet and dramatic novel that offers great emotional urgency and wisdom. It is bold in its scale, placing readers at different eras—in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and in the scientific world of Los Alamos, New Mexico. With extraordinary sensitivity, the author unfolds the story of a woman musician inheriting the “score” of another woman's life, reconciling its themes of self-discovery with the processes of self-discovery in her own life, and, finally, freeing imprisoned memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781939650122

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Winner of the Jim Sagel Prize for the Novel

Short-listed for the PEN Southwest Book Award

Selection of Durango-La Plata Reads

A Selection of NPR Performance Today Summer Reading Series

Permissions

The excerpt from Mark Doty’s Lament-Heaven appears in My Alexandria (University of Illinois, 1993) and is reprinted courtesy of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lenard-Cook, Lisa.

Dissonance : a novel / Lisa Lenard-Cook.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-1-939650-11-5

1. Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)—Fiction. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Fiction. 3. Concentration camp inmates—Fiction. 4. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 5. Prague (Czech Republic)—Fiction. 6. Women music teachers—Fiction. 7. Santa Fe (N.M.)—Fiction. 8. Jewish women—Fiction.

9. Jewish fiction. 10. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3612.E52D57 2014

813’.6—dc23

2013040810

Published by SFWP

369 Montezuma Ave. #350

Santa Fe, NM 87501

[phone]

www.sfwp.com

www.lisalenardcook.com

....I can’t remember

even the melody, which doesn’t matter;

there’s nothing to hold

but the memory of the sensation

of such moments, canceling out

the whine of the self

that doesn’t want to be ground down,

answering the little human cry

at the heart of the elegy,

Oh why aren’t I what I wanted to be,

exempt from history?...

Mark Doty

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The piano is unique among instruments for its double stroke. The player touches a key, C , let us say, and the key’s depression moves a hammer onto a string: Do , says the piano. Or, the player may strike a number of keys simultaneously: C, E, G , and then the piano will sound a C-major chord.

In the 20th century, composers have moved to more dissonant chord constructions. The listener balks. But it is, in its way, a fitting metaphor for what this century has wrought.

My name is Anna Kramer, and I am a piano teacher. Monday through Friday afternoons, from three-thirty until six, I entertain children in various stages of their movement toward adulthood with the mysteries of the instrument. My Steinway Grand sits in a plant-filled room with good, filtered southern light, and in winter as the shadows lengthen, the plants etch mottled patterns across both the keys and the faces of the young students. The keys are white and black; the students are white—Anglo, as we call them here—and the shadows are a translucent grey that border on an illusion. When the shadows surrender to the dark, I turn on the single focused light above the music stand, its glare causing momentary blinking in the student. Again, I say, as if I have not noticed the darkness, as if I have not noticed the way a sudden spotlight can startle a living creature into stillness.

Again, I say, and the student’s eyes move to the top of the sheet of music, to the opening refrain of Für Elise or the Moonlight Sonata. I am traditional in the music I choose for my young students. The dissonance will come soon enough, with or without me.

My husband is a nuclear physicist, as was my father, though my husband is Jewish, which my father was not. My father, Leon Holtz, was a Major General in the United States Army, and, during World War II, he was in charge of what went on here in Los Alamos. My father was among the men who pored over a map of Japan and decided: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. My father was proud of his work and the way he performed it. My father was proud that his decisions helped end a war that had already gone on far too long. Is it only I who now wonders at his ease, at the facility with which he touched that map and said, There. And there? Is it only I who sees her own existence as a counterpoint to those other lives? Survivor’s guilt, I have heard this called, though I have not suffered as those true survivors do. No. I am only the progeny of the man who made certain few of them did.

We have no children, my husband and I. When I was a girl, there were air-raid drills, and we sat cross-legged under our desks with our heads down, hands knitted behind our necks. I did not think that I would see adulthood, when I was a girl, and so I did not consider children a possibility.

Of course, it is possible that my sterility is a result of growing up here in Los Alamos, but nobody knows for certain. But my husband and I do not have children. The closest I can come is my students, who, of course, are not really mine at all.

My husband’s name is Paul Kramer. His parents, of whom only his mother is still alive, were in Auschwitz together, though they somehow did not know each other at the time. After Auschwitz, both emigrated to Buffalo, New York, where my mother-in-law, Rose, had a second cousin, and my father-in-law, Isaac, an old friend from the town where he had been raised. Buffalo is where Paul grew up, and I met him at a party in Ithaca years later. I was his roommate’s date.

The mailman rang the doorbell; the letter was registered, return receipt, and he needed a signature. It was from a law firm in Albuquerque, and something about it kept me from opening it right away. I made a cup of tea, and when it was ready, I took it and the letter to the kitchen table and sat down.

I slit the envelope carefully with a knife; it seemed to demand it. Inside was a Notice to the Heirs of Hana Weissova. The name set off an odd humming, distant, but no recognition. I read on.

To the pianist Anna Holtz Kramer, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, I do give, devise, and bequeath my journals and my original music scores, to use as she shall see fit.

I skimmed the rest of the gives, devises, and bequeaths, but that was all. I read the other names: a sister, Raja Weissova BenTov, in Haifa, Israel; a godson, David Stone, in Albuquerque. Hana Weissova. I heard the humming again, an aria perhaps. But I couldn’t place the name.

I dialed the number on the letterhead and asked for the lawyer who had signed the letter. I agreed to drive down to Albuquerque on Saturday, when an estate sale would be occurring at Hana Weissova’s home. The lawyer gave me directions. I hung up and made another cup of tea.

The drive to Albuquerque still thrills me, though there’s much more traffic now and the interstate is completed all the way from Santa Fe. The land on either side of the interstate is painted in muted pastels, and changes according to the time of day. Distances are different, infinite even, and the emptiness is at once startling and soothing.

Midway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, an outlet mall sprawls where there used to be a stuccoed bar sheltered by cottonwoods, the latter the place we always stopped when I was a girl, for Cokes and to pee or to just stretch our legs. The building’s still there, boarded up, and I worry, absurdly, that one day when I drive to Albuquerque it will be gone.

Do buildings leave some essence behind when they are no longer there? Certainly people do: My father speaks to me every day, his voice unchanged, still directing my life from his command post. My mother appears in gestures of my own: hair brushed off a cheek; legs crossed twice, at both the ankle and the knee; or a certain bend to the fingers as they come down on the Steinway’s keys, a touch that the piano translates to music, and for which the child yearns.

The boarded-up bar was still there; I drove by about 10:30 that morning and traffic exiting for the outlet mall backed up in the right lanes on both sides of the interstate. To the southeast, clouds curled over the top of the Sandias, and to the west, the sky over the Jemez was a dull and uniform grey. The air smelled of cold and snow, and I closed my vent, something I do not like to do. I tuned the radio to KUNM; they were playing Sousa marches, which I ordinarily avoid but which somehow seemed appropriate to the weather. A half-hour later, I exited the interstate at San Mateo and went into a coffee bar in a strip mall to clear the freeway buzz—and perhaps the Sousa—from my head.

While I drank a cup of hot tea, I read the letter again. I unfolded my Albuquerque map, which I’d brought in from the car, and looked up each of the street names. Albuquerque, except for its very old center, is a planned city, easy to navigate once you’ve memorized the main roads, set at one-mile intervals from the western volcanoes to the eastern mountains and from the Air Force base in the south to Sandia Pueblo in the north.

The estate sale was in the South Valley, where the majority of horror stories on the nightly news took place (all New Mexico television stations are based in Albuquerque, its largest city), and, except for a visit to the zoo as a teen, I was certain I’d never been there.

I studied the map, looking for a route that might be relatively free of drive-by shootings, trying to recall which streets were most often mentioned by the newscasters. I looked up and around at the others in the coffee bar. A man in jogging clothes sat at the next table, reading the Albuquerque Journal, while on my other side another man, in jeans and leather jacket, stared unseeing out the window, drumming his fingers on the table. I opted for the jogging suit.

I’ve never been there, he admitted when I asked, but stood to study the map over my shoulder. I’m sure this would be okay, he went on, pointing to Bridge and then to Atrisco. What’s the name of the street again?

I showed him where it was on the map. It dead-ends at an acequia, he said, indicating the blue of the irrigation ditch, so you can only get to it from Atrisco. You get off at the Cesar Chavez exit, and go right. You’ll be fine, but you might want to keep your doors locked.

It turned out to not be so bad at all. Immediately off the freeway the houses were shabby and small, with faded paint barely covering their stucco, nothing but dirt and dried clots of soon-to-be tumbleweeds in the small, chain-link-fenced yards, and iron bars on every window and door. Then, suddenly, everything changed. The road bustled with businesses, produce stands, taquerias, used clothing stores. Hand-painted signs leaned against pickups, offering piñon nuts and firewood displayed on lowered tailgates. Beyond the business area, which was perhaps a half mile long, the road crossed the bridge. Now, open places appeared and the cross-streets that went north and south disappeared into cottonwoods. Atrisco was the third of these, and I turned right, then found the street I was seeking and turned left.

When I saw the house, I was immediately glad I had come. A high adobe wall abutted the uncurbed road and surrounded the front courtyard. High cottonwoods, their leaves brown and rattling in the wind, arced over the top, and a faded wood entrada stood open, the ornate estate sale sign’s arrow pointing invitingly inside.

I found a parking place where the road dead-ended at the acequia and walked the half-block back to the house. The weather was such that you know you will remember it forever after as the distinct feel of a certain type of November Saturday morning, the wind both a threat and a promise, and the air unusually damp, chilling even the bones.

But inside the wall, everything changed. The agents had set the outdoor items for sale in neat rows—Adirondack chairs and huge terra cotta planters with browned stalks withered in their dirt, chile ristras of all sizes hung on metal coat-racks, and garden implements leaned tidily against black wrought-iron tables.

The brick path led to an open front door, which was painted a lovely sky blue—azul, the Spanish word, fits this blue so much better—and I followed it in. Both the merely curious and the more serious sale aficionados milled inside, moving from room to room, inspecting furniture and the smaller items set out on tables. Discrete agents offered help without being pushy, and I asked one, a young woman with a blonde buzz cut and flowing flowered skirt, about an abalone dresser set that reminded me of one my mother had once had. I decided I did not need it, at the price. The house was somehow familiar, in that way strange houses sometimes are. It was almost as if I had been there before, in a dream perhaps, though I am not, like so many in New Mexico are, one who puts much stock in such things.

The piano was in a conservatory at the back of the house, and the conservatory itself was both unexpected and perfectly suited. Although it followed the eastern style—large, windowed, facing out to a well-kept garden—it was southwestern as well, with thick adobe walls, viga-beamed ceilings, their wood dark and weathered, a kiva fireplace in one corner in which an inviting fire was indeed burning. The floors were a dark Saltillo tile, covered with worn Navajo rugs, and bookcases had been built into the walls, bookcases that now displayed neat stacks of what looked to be very old papers.

I asked the agent in that room where the lawyer was. The agent was an earnest middle-aged man, a white carnation in his lapel—he rather reminded me of Tony Randall—and he led me to a man seated discretely at a table in a far corner. I introduced myself, and he snapped open his briefcase without further conversation, then carefully lifted out a stack of plastic-encased scores. All at once I had to hold one myself, and I reached for one, nearly grabbed for it, and he seemed to jump back, though of course that is not as it was at all. He handed it to me carefully, as if it were a flower long-preserved which could quickly turn to dust. I touched the music through the plastic, and then I heard it, an arrangement unlike any I had ever heard before. The first touch of music is quite unlike any other in its echoes, in its evocation of memories not yet known.

Did you know Hana Weissova? the lawyer asked me. How could he have known? I did not, I said, and so he told me that she had been a composer and music teacher in Czechoslovakia before the War, not terribly well-known but making a name for herself, until she was interred at Terezín.

Terezín? I asked.

Theresienstadt? he said. "Perhaps you know that

Reviews for Dissonance

[tracycampbell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a beautiful and moving book. It tells the story of Anna, a piano teacher who finds out she has inherited some very special pieces of music form a woman she does not know. Through the music, and Anna's own personal journey, she uncovers a past that has been forgotten. Stories from the Holocaust, stories about her mother and stories about herself. This book moved me in so many ways; it is beautifully written, and although there are may musical references, you do not need to be a musician to understand the parallels between life and the music that Anna is describing.

[smits_52 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

this book had lots of potential however, it tried to tell too many stories at once. Anna Kramer is a piano teacher unfulfilled in life. She inherits journals from a composer Hana Weissova who is a concentration camp survivor. Hana's story is told as well. Hana's story meshes with Anna's mother, Katherine Holz and her father who activated the atomic bomb. All these characters are interesting however i had trouble really caring as the stories are skimmed over.

[jcambridge_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it highly, especially to those who love classical music. The author does a masterful job of pulling together music, family relationships, and the holocaust. I am amazed at what she was able to capture in only 150 pages -- a sign of a truly gifted writer. The only reason I didn't give it the full 5 stars is that i wanted the story to continue... Read it, you won't be sorry!

[alans_430515 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

There are two strands to this short novel that eventually come together by the end of the book. The first strand has to do with the life of a woman in contemporary times who teaches piano to children in a small town. She discusses her life and her love for music, her difficult relationship with her distant husband and her memories of her parents. Her mother was also a piano teacher and a very giftedplayer while her father was supposed to have been the infamous person who worked at a lab inLos Almos New Mexico and made the decision where to drop the atomic bond which eventually ended the second world war. The second strand of the novel and the more interesting one for me, involves aCzech Jewish woman who was a notable piano player and composer, eventually interned in a concentration camp and then imigrates to the United States where she eventually comes into contact and forms a deep friendship with the narrator's mother. The story involving the European pianist isfar more interesting to me because it deals with the hardship that Jews faced during the second worl war. The other story, about the contemporary piano instructor was not as interesting to me becausea lot of the woman's ideas center around music theory and I felt like she was lecturing me on topicsthat were of interest to her.I found it very difficult to make it to the end of this book even though I did finish it. I found the writingto be competent but the story just didn't interest me.There is far too much discussion on the theoryof music and art for my liking and the story of the woman's contemporary life just didn't apeal to me.There is a major surprise at the end of the book that could be plausible, I suppose, but I really didn'tbuy into it because so much of the book just struck me as being implausible. Even though the narrator's father is supposed to be the person who made the decision where the atomic bomb is dropped, I just didn't buy into that either. All in all I can't recommend this book to anyone because I justfound it to be a very dull read.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

[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

[janarose1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I quickly lost interest in this book. I did not like the author's writing style and felt that they jumped back and forth from point of view to point of view. This made it hard to get a real sense of the characters. Overall, a bust.

[lechatnoir1981 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[tcarter_77 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This slim novel explores the intricacies of daughter - parent relationships with a framework provided by the intertwining themes of the development of music theory and the Holocaust. If that sounds ambitious that's because it is. The complexity is increased by the variety of forms in the writing, from essays to diary entries to more classic first person narrative, though even that switches from one character to another. All in all it works, and the different subjects do inform each other and weave together well. The forms of writing provide a texture to the piece that is pleasing. For me there was one too many parallel female characters to keep track of, and I lost the thread occasionally. An interesting piece of work that I'm glad I read.

[alexand6rra13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really did enjoy the stories of Anna and Hana in this novel. Hana's especially grabbed my attention and I found myself looking forward to her sections. The thing that bothered me about the book was the breaks to discuss musical theory and physics. They read like textbook passages, just listing definitions. It was a chore to read through these parts and I felt the book would have been a lot better without them. I'm also not sure why Anna entirely blocked huge chunks of her childhood memories. I don't feel like that was ever really explained and it didn't entirely make sense. Overall it was an enjoyable book and Hana's stories especially kept me reading.

[mooingzelda · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a short and calmly narrated novel that I enjoyed overall. I found the descriptions of Hana's life more engaging than Anna's parts, but that's partly down to my own specific interest in accounts of the Holocaust. I also felt some things were left a little unexplained/unclear, but not to the detriment of the plot or enjoyment of the story. Some of Anna's sections veered a little too much into essays/theorising for my liking, but on the whole I was rather captivated by this book.

[lorimarie_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book through the Early Reviewer's people and I'm so happy that I did. It came in the mail on a Saturday when all I was doing was reading a book for my book club. I opened up Dissonance and didn't close it until I had finished it. I think it was an amazing story, so well written, so complex and yet so easy to read. The only part I had a bit of trouble with were the musical explanations. I feel like they were too technical. For a music lover I'm sure they were great, but not for me. I am always so in awe of an author that can accomplish so much in such a short book.

[chive_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this a profoundly melancholic book which is no bad thing. The melancholy of the lonely piano teacher was written very well. Interspersed with this is the story of a concentration camp survivor who survived because of her music. Initially there appears to be no connection between the two women and watching the relationship between the alive Anna and the dead Hana was fascinating as it developed.The only reason this doesn't has five stars is that I found the writing styles and voices of the two woman to be too similar.

[seeword · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received a finished copy from the publisher as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Sometimes a book just hits the spot for the reader. This is a story of suppressed memory, self discovery, forgiveness, and redemption. A piano teacher in New Mexico inherits the musical scores and diaries of a Holocaust survivor an begins a search to find out why these things were left to her. Loved it. This was not the one I hoped to win in the LT July batch, but I think I liked it better than I would have liked the ones I didn't win. I got lucky with this.

[garyseverance-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lisa Leanard-Cook’s novel, Dissonance, is a symphony with familiar themes performed in 21st Century motif. It is a story of transitions brought on by intervals of character relationships that are not complete, that beg resolution and harmony. It may take a life time to resolve the dissonance of safety and horror, love and loss, sharing and repression, religiosity and isolation, self-acceptance and doubt, peace and war. Some characters make their transitions sooner than others, but all are drawn toward personal harmony.The questions that the characters ask themselves involve the structures of their lives. Like 20th Century symphonies, the ambitious actions of their lives may involve a dramatic first movement of early development, a lyrical second period of love and adulthood, a dance-like third movement of career and talent expressiveness, and a rousing triumphant achievement of goals. However, the 21st Century symphonic structure may reflect more complex symphonies with unpleasant dissonance mixed with harmony and more than four movements. Characters’ lives may be chaotic requiring tolerance of ambiguity, fear, and self-doubt. But even these complex psychological states seem to drive the characters toward harmonic resolution of their relationships.The structure of the novel is contemporary, involving short sections within long chapters. Time periods are in the sections covering pre-World War II in Europe, the holocaust, the development of nuclear weapons, and current nuclear research in New Mexico. The importance of the performance of music of the main character Anna Kramer is presented through her own behaviors and observations. Enhancement of Anna’s appreciation of listening to music and her performance as a pianist is revealed in an epistolary style as she reacts to a diary and sheet music she inherits from a virtuoso pianist and Jewish holocaust survivor Hana Weissova. This is a very good short novel (149 pages) and I recommend it highly. Readers do not have to have a special knowledge of musical terms and may gain some new knowledge about classical music.

[janerawoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In its way, twentieth-century composers' use of dissonant chords in their music is a fitting metaphor for events in the twentieth century. I paraphrased the opening line. This short novel/novella was a gripping read and highly recommended. A pianist, Anna Kramer, inherits diaries and scores of music composed by a woman she's never met. Why does Anna in particular receive that legacy? Intrigued, she sets out to unravel that mystery. The author brings the setting, the Los Alamos, New Mexico of today to life for me; the author must live there. The author is involved in the Santa Fe Writers' Project. Anna examines these documents with an eagle eye; the novel moves back and forth through the present-day; the composer Hana Weissova's life, much of it through her internment in Terezín [Theresienstadt] Concentration camp in Czechoslovakia by the Nazis; and excerpts from the diaries. Terezín was designated as a 'showplace' concentration camp; residents were mostly artists, musicians, and others in the arts. The story leads through Anna's investigations to a shattering conclusion. I liked very much how the story married the past and the present through the power of music. Hana had written a symphony, partly based on a Jewish lullaby, both important to the story. I liked the author's little digressions on musical form and history, assuming some knowledge of musical structure and history, but nothing over the head of an ordinary music lover, such as myself. It was a beautiful, human story, the denouement a bit disappointing [ah, dissonant] in some respects. It brought the story into euphonious harmony, with others. The writing was well-done and stark. To me, the subject of the novel reflected the inharmonious Zeitgeist of our times.I won this through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

[gmcdonald-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bale_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The dissonance found in 20th century music is the direct result of a world at variance with itself. Over an extended period of time the discord reveals itself in the arts. “One way modern composers have chosen to address the increased fragmentation of life in the twentieth century is to create a more fragmented music.” (p. 77)In her recently re-issued novella, Dissonance, Lenard-Cook elaborates on this theme by focusing on the irony (although irony is not a direct theme, it is nonetheless inherent within the stories context) experienced during the Holocaust when the elite Nazi's jailed artists at the Terezin Concentration Camp for their entertainment. Jews were not valued enough to be allowed to work, go to school, or even live, yet could play beautiful chamber and symphonic music for Nazi's before being shipped off to their death at Auschwitz, if they lived long enough to make it there.Never being able to fathom the degree to which man can manifest his prejudices, Jewish musicians continued to compose concert music while at Terezin. In essence, they had hope for a future tomorrow when they could share their creations. After the war, in the later part of the century, manuscripts that were saved by the few remaining musicians and their families, were collected, produced, and published in a series of moving CD's - Terezin Music Anthology.Lenard-Cook's exposition is intricately composed. She creates a series of parallel themes intrinsic to the development of her story. For example: music and physics, harmony and dissonance, prejudice and impartiality; and likewise between characters: Hana and Anna - two musicians separated by a generation, but connected by Anna's mother, also a musician - fathers and husbands, mothers and daughters. “Someone once suggested that music sounds the way emotions feel, that music reveals the hidden patterns of our inner lives in the same way that mathematics reveals the outer, physical world.” (p. 63) These relationships are central to the book's plot and thematic structures.The author's writing is erudite, she has researched her subject matter and translated it with sensitivity. Her style and narrative are at times eloquent while at other times tedious. She has difficulty arriving at the main point of her story. The reader becomes frustrated following her digressions. Once Lenard-Cook reaches her peak conflict, it is anti-climatic because it does not match the scope of the intended novel. Much of the resolution does not seem plausible. The denouement is academic and the central structure is marginalized. It is a major flaw in an otherwise well conceived novel.

[katebaxter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.Synopsis (from book's back cover):When Anna Kramer, a Los Alamos piano teacher, inherits the journals and scores of composer Hana Weissova, she is mystified by this bequest from a woman she does not know. Hana’s music, however, soon begins to uncover forgotten emotions, while her journals, which begin in 1945 after she is released from a concentration camp, slowly reveal decades-old secrets that Anna and her family have kept buried.

[theoclarke · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favourite books; this short novel explores essential themes of the very nature of humanity. In the divided social landscape of New Mexico, a disatisfied self-contained piano teacher receives the bequest of a diary and musical scores from a mysterious holocause survivor. As she explores this strange legacy she learns about herself and her familial relationships in a way that informs us of the human condition. The narrator's deep involvement with musical theory and uncomfortable proximity to physics counterpoint the psychological exploration. The rich conceptual layering is at odds with the sparse language and this weaving of clarity and complexity is just one of the many dissonances to which the title might refer.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This well-written novel is the story of Anna Kramer's search for her connection with Hana Weissova who left her a legacy of some diaries and musical compositions. Anna's mother had been a pianist, and her father had been one of those responsible for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hana had been in the concentration camp at Terezin in the Czech Republic where she had played the piano. I had never heard of this book until it was loaned to me by a friend. Its details on music theory are very interesting for those of us who love music. Those same details might be too "technical" for someone who lacks that appreciation. I sometimes found myself trying to determine which "voice" was speaking because of the frequent changes in time and place in the novel. This, however, did not mar my enjoyment of the novel, although it did keep me from rating it higher. This book deserves a much wider audience than it has.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"To the pianist Anna Holtz Kramer, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, I do give, devise, and bequeath my journals and my original music scores, to use as she shall see fit." Anna is surprised when she learns that she is one of the heirs of Hana Weissova, a woman she cannot remember. Why would a stranger leave her so personal a legacy? As she discovers Hana through her journals, Anna also discovers new truths about herself.I suspect that this book reflects some of the tensions of life in New Mexico, the home of both the nuclear research laboratory in Los Alamos and the artists' mecca of Taos. These tensions are internal for Anna, whose mother was a gifted pianist and whose father was the nuclear physicist who made the decision to target Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons in World War II. Anna's life mirrors her mother's, as Anna's husband, Paul, is also a nuclear physicist. Anna's language is music, and her reflections on her life are wrapped up in music theory and psychology.I readily identified with Anna since my mother, a talented pianist, began teaching me to play when I was four. I think other musicians would enjoy this novel, but I'm not sure how well people without some musical education will like it. I can't remember a time when music wasn't a part of my life, so it's difficult for me to view the book from a different perspective. The book will also appeal to readers of Holocaust literature since Hana was a survivor of the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

[pbadeer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

as far as I'm concerned, this is the best book that no one is reading. I picked it up at a library show in New Mexico for something to read on the plane. I had low expectations, but it was part of a "New Mexico Reads" program...and it was free. It was probably the best book I read all that year.I've loaned out my copy so many times, that it is now in perpetual loan status, so I don't have character names in front of me, but the story is simple and powerful. The main character, a pianist from New Mexico, inherits a trunk of original music scores from a woman she does not know. In researching her connection she unearths family secrets from WWII as well as the fascinating history of the concentration camp at Terezin. Lenard-Cook deftly incorporates all of the themes beautifully, offering unique insights on history and its impact on the characters lives.