Cassandra Campbell brings the practiced touch of a seasoned performer to her narration of this story in which a piano figures heavily. Katya Dmitrievna and Clara Lundy begin their lives a generation and a continent apart, but an old Blüthner upright piano connects them to each other like a piano string connects hammer and key. Campbell fluidly advances their separate stories, moving deftly between the accents and attitudes of Soviet Russia and current-day California. Campbell’s performance lifts up this story, even—or especially—when the truths Clara begins to discover about her piano (a gift from her father before his death) and about herself seem set to bury her under their weight. K.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
The Weight of a Piano: A novel
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell
Chris CanderUnabridged — 9 hours, 55 minutes
The Weight of a Piano: A novel
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell
Chris CanderUnabridged — 9 hours, 55 minutes
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Overview
In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America-and loses her piano in the process.
In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara's career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer-and the secret history of her piano-will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing.
Editorial Reviews
★ 11/05/2018
In her elegiac and evocative novel, Cander (Whisper Hollow) explores the legacy of loss, the intersections of art and music, and what happens when physical objects assume outsized symbolism. As a young girl in the Soviet Union in 1962, Katya admires her neighbor’s Blüthner piano; when he leaves it to her after his death, Katya pursues her musical passions and becomes obsessed with maintaining possession of the piano, even when given the opportunity to flee as a dissident. In California in 2012, Clara is a 26-year-old auto mechanic. Her boyfriend has just ended their relationship and demanded that she move out—along with the Blüthner that is her only remaining link to her dead parents. When a piano-moving accident leaves Clara with a broken hand and unable to work, she impulsively puts the piano for sale on Craigslist—and the response she receives sends her deep into the barren beauty of Death Valley and into a new relationship that may shed light on her family history, and on the cursed history of that piano. Reminiscent of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, Cander’s novel delves into the often unexplainable genesis of artistic inspiration and examines how family legacy—the physical objects people inherit, the genetic traits people carry on, and the generational lore people internalize—can both ignite imagination and limit its scope. Cander brilliantly and convincingly expresses music and visual art in her writing, capturing both within a near-alien but surprisingly stunning landscape. (Jan.)
Immense, intense and imaginative. . . . The Weight of a Piano is about memory and identity. . . . Cander is a smart, deft storyteller [and] understands how something as beloved as a piano can actually be a burden.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Lyrical...intricate...an intriguing, serendipitous story [that offers] readers access to unique experiences.”
The Washington Post
“The reader is left to contemplate loss and legacy, the novel’s notion of ‘poetry and color and imagination’ lingering like the notes of a distant song. . . . Cander proves herself masterful.”
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Deeply resonant, The Weight of a Piano will resonate with anyone who has been shattered by loss, anyone who is frozen in time or place, unwilling to open themselves to others or unable to overcome the anger that accompanies the absence of love. The life of the piano—and its presence in the lives of [these characters]—lingers in the music of the mind and heart.”
—Historical Novel Society
“Cander has a gift for description. . . . The Weight of a Piano is not just a meditation on the things of our lives, but also an argument that these are also subjective correlatives for all of the things that we cannot stand to lose.”
—Houstonia Magazine
“Elegiac and evocative. . . . Cander brilliantly and convincingly expresses music and visual art in her writing, capturing both within a near-alien but surprisingly stunning landscape.”
—Publishers Weekly, “Books of the Week”
“Both ambitiously sprawling and shrewdly focused. . . . Cander’s themes run a broad gamut, from the search for love and the complications of marital infidelity to the consequences of childhood trauma and the plight of refugees fleeing a hopeless life. The most enduring theme, however, is the power of art to redeem heartbreak and to provide consolation and, in some cases, hope.”
—Chapter 16
“A charming, puzzling plot that gets more exciting and addictive the deeper you sink into it. . . . Cander’s unadorned prose composes some truly beautiful descriptions of the joy of music.”
—BookPage (starred review)
“The Weight of a Piano showcases [Cander’s] development as a powerful storyteller, reminding me of Accordion Crimes by the great Annie Proulx. . . . [This is] an original, creative tackling of the essentially solitary human condition; the effort required of women to claim full personhood; and the frightening vulnerability necessary to connect with another, defiant in the face of the transitory nature of all things”
—Lone Star Literary
“Cander interweaves a surprising, time-jumping plot with a deep understanding of her characters’ emotional landscapes. The Weight of a Piano is also an exploration of the healing and cathartic powers of art and music, making it the perfect gift for the creatives in your life.”
—Refinery29
“[An] extraordinary tale of pain, fear, loss and love. . . . The Weight of a Piano is a touching story of survival—for two families, two girls, and an instrument.”
—BookTrib.com
“In The Weight of a Piano, two women are linked by one instrument. . . . Chris Cander masterfully reveals how these women’s lives connect (and how the piano came to be made) and, in the process, meditates on grief and living in the past.”
—Real Simple “Five Books That Won’t Disappoint”
“This beautiful tale . . . is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Strong characterization and attention to detail, whether in the manufacture of a piano or in the desolate beauty of Death Valley, elevate Cander's tale about learning to let go of the past.”
—Booklist
"Deftly plotted and well written, a gentle meditation on the healing power of art—and its limitations. . . . Cander grabs the reader in her bravura, thickly detailed opening pages [and] expertly parcels out her revelations [as] she builds parallel narratives [toward] an odd but beautiful finale."
Kirkus Reviews
Cassandra Campbell brings the practiced touch of a seasoned performer to her narration of this story in which a piano figures heavily. Katya Dmitrievna and Clara Lundy begin their lives a generation and a continent apart, but an old Blüthner upright piano connects them to each other like a piano string connects hammer and key. Campbell fluidly advances their separate stories, moving deftly between the accents and attitudes of Soviet Russia and current-day California. Campbell’s performance lifts up this story, even—or especially—when the truths Clara begins to discover about her piano (a gift from her father before his death) and about herself seem set to bury her under their weight. K.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
★ 2018-10-02
Two people nursing childhood wounds meet via a piano and take a journey toward closure across Death Valley.
Cander (Whisper Hollow, 2015, etc.) grabs the reader in her opening pages: a bravura, thickly detailed account of the creation of a Blüthner piano from wood culled in the forests of Romania, then lovingly aged and shaped in a factory in Leipzig. Blüthner No. 66,825 comes to Katya, a gifted Soviet musician who reluctantly immigrates to California with her husband, Mikhail, who promises that her beloved piano will soon follow. Somehow, decades later in 2012, it has wound up in the possession of Clara, an auto mechanic in Bakersfield who impulsively puts it up for sale after she and the piano are kicked out by her live-in boyfriend, frustrated by her inability to commit. How these stories connect doesn't become apparent until long after Clara reneges on her sale to photographer Greg Zeldin, realizing she can't give up the only connection to her parents, who died in a fire when she was 12. Cander expertly parcels out her revelations: Alert readers will likely figure out that Greg is Katya's son before he admits it on route to Death Valley, but the final plot twist is a satisfying surprise. Clues are carefully planted, however, as Cander builds parallel narratives in alternating chapters. Clara warily joins forces with Greg, allowing him to lease the piano and following him to Death Valley, where he takes a series of photos of the piano perched in locations he once visited with his mother. Flashbacks chronicle Katya's increasing misery in the U.S., mitigated only temporarily—and ultimately disastrously—when her piano belatedly arrives. As the narratives converge, Greg convinces himself and almost convinces Clara that the piano shows they were meant to be together. Her realization that it's not so simple prompts an odd but beautiful finale that leads from inside the piano's consciousness to the summit of Dante's Peak.
Deftly plotted and well written, a gentle meditation on the healing power of art—and its limitations.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172226465 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/22/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,069,706 |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Hidden in dense forests high in the Romanian mountains, where the winters were especially cold and long, were spruce trees that would be made into pianos: exquisite instruments famous for the warmth of their tone and beloved by the likes of Schumann and Liszt. One man alone knew how to choose them.
Once the leaves had fallen and snow blanketed the ground, Julius Blüthner made the trip from Leipzig by train and walked through the forest alone. Because of the elevation and the brutal cold, trees there grew very slowly. They stood straight and thick against the elements, their grain dense with rosin. Blüthner nodded to the young trees as he passed, occasionally brushing their bark in greeting. He sought the older ones, whose branches he couldn’t reach, whose diameters were so great he couldn’t see if a bear were standing behind the trunk. He knocked them with his walking stick, and pressed his ear against them as his intuition dictated, listening for the music hidden inside. He heard it more clearly than any other piano maker, better even than Ignaz Bösendorfer and Carl Bechstein and Henry Steinway. When he found what he was listening for, he marked the tree with a scrap of red wool, which stood out bright against the snow.
Then the lumberjacks he’d hired cut down the trees he’d chosen. Watching closely, Blüthner could tell which were the finest specimens by how they fell. Only those with a minimum of seven annular rings per centimeter, all evenly spaced, would be carried out of the forest on sleds, then shipped back to Germany. And the finest among these would become the soundboards that beat like hearts inside his famous pianos.
As protection against splitting, the logs were kept wet until they reached the sawmill. There they were quarter-sawn to unlock the purest tones, then sawn and planed into uniform planks. The wood chips went into the furnaces to heat the mill and power the steam engines. Because of knots and other imperfections revealed in the cutting, many of the precious tonewood planks also ended up in the furnaces. What was kept was nearly perfect: white in color; light and flexible; the faint traces of the rings densely spaced and running parallel across the faces of the soundboard planks. These raw boards were stored for at least two years, covered and uncovered until their humidity dwindled to about fourteen percent.
When it was ready, the wood was transported by horse cart to the enormous Blüthner factory in the western quarter of Leipzig and laid out on racks near the ceiling in hot rooms for many months. But even then it wasn’t ready to become an instrument. To ensure that the soundboard would someday conduct Blüthner’s peerless golden tone, the wood had to dry out for another few years in the open air.
It was with reverence, then, in 1905, that an assistant Klavierbaumeister selected a number of those carefully seasoned planks and glued them edge to edge to form a single board. He cut it to the proper shape and planed it to the proper thickness, flexible enough to vibrate but strong enough to push back against the pressure of more than two hundred strings. Once crafted, it was returned to those warmer rooms to dry further before thin ribs could be applied to its underside, perpendicular to the grain lines. Then the soundboard took on a small amount of moisture, enough to allow its top to swell into a gentle curve, upon which the bass and treble bridges would sit, their downward pressure meeting the apex of the opposing curve as if around a great barrel. The Klavierbaumeister admired his work: the impeccably matched parallels of the grain, the precise curvature of the crown. This particular soundboard would provide the heart for the factory’s 66,825th piano.
The frame of the case was built by other craftsmen, its five back posts sturdy enough to bear the weight of the soundboard and the iron plate. The pinblock was cut and fitted. The agraffes were seated into the plate at a height that would determine the speaking length of the strings, which were then strung; tuning pins were hammered in, and the action set and fitted. Cold-pressed felt was layered thick onto the wooden hammers, thinning appropriately toward the delicate treble side. Dampers were installed next, along with the trapwork of pedals and levers, dowels and springs. The case was ebonized after the guts were in, requiring countless coats. The finishers’ arm muscles bulged above their rolled-up shirtsleeves.
Next the instrument, nearly complete, was tuned, the tension of each of the 220 strings adjusted to the correct pitch. Then it was regulated, the touch and responsiveness of the action attended to until the motion of the fingers on the keys would be properly transferred to the hammers that struck the strings.
At last, after many years of effort by many expert hands, the piano was delivered to its final station for voicing. The Meister there lifted the linen blanket covering it and passed a hand over the shiny black top. Why should this piano be special? Each one was special, with its own soul and distinct personality. This one was substantial but unassuming, mysterious but sincere. He let the linen drop onto the factory floor.
“What will you say to this world?” he asked the instrument.
He shaped the hammers one by one, listening to every string, shaving and minutely aerating the felt again and again. He was like a diagnostician, knocking the nerves below a patient’s kneecap, measuring the response. The piano called out each time in compliant reply. Hello, hello.
“Fertig,” he said when the work was done. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, pushed the wisps of white hair away from his face. Standing back from the piano, he regarded this complete and brand-new entity that would be—after being played in properly—capable of incredible feats. The first few years were unpredictable, but over time it would open up and gather into itself a unique history. For now it was a perfect instrument, characterized only by its potential.
The Meister fluffed his apron as he sat down on the barrel he’d borrowed for a seat and, flexing his fingers, considered which piece to christen the piano with. Schubert, his favorite composer. He would play the rondo of his penultimate sonata, the big A Major; the opening melody was pretty, with a feeling of hopefulness and joy that preceded its more pensive, agitated development. This would be the perfect inauguration of the glistening black Blüthner No. 66,825.
“Listen!” he called out, but nobody could hear him above the factory’s ambient noise. “Here she is born!”
And he pressed his finger down on C-sharp, the first note of the rondo, listening hard, and it rang out to meet him with the innocence and power of a child’s first cry. Finding it as pure as he’d hoped, he began to play the rest of the sonata. He would send off this shining new piano with as much optimism as he could gather, knowing it would no longer be as vestal once it was touched by its future owners’ desperately human hands.
Chapter Two
Clara Lundy kicked a step stool against the front tire of an old 1996 Chevrolet Blazer and leaned over the engine, tossing her dark blond ponytail over her shoulder. She unscrewed the cap of the relief fitting and put a shop towel over it to catch the gas that leaked out when she pressed the valve. When the lines were bled, she stuffed the towel into her back pocket and went to her toolbox to grab the 16mm and 19mm wrenches and the quick-disconnect tool. Then, with an athletic jump, she disappeared into the yellow-framed pit so she could work from underneath. She removed the bracket, released the snap-lock fitting, and pulled the rubber hose off the outlet side of the filter first to keep the fuel from dripping in her eyes. She’d learned that lesson long ago in her uncle’s garage and had never forgotten it.
“Hey, Clara?” Peter Kappas, one of the shop owners’ three sons, peered down at her. A halo of late afternoon sunlight outlined his bulky silhouette. “That guy with the rack-and-pinion job’s back again. He says it’s still making noise.”
“Same noise or new?”
“Popping. Bolts, probably.”
“Can you do it? I’m not done with this filter.”
“I promised the Corvette would be done by five.”
Clara slipped the new filter into the bracket. “Okay, give me fifteen. I’ll get it up in the air and see what’s going on. But if it’s the mounting bolts, then you’ll have to do the alignment again. You got time?”
“For you?”
“Stop.”
He raised his arms. “Kidding. Yeah, I can do it.”
After she tightened all the bolts and checked the lines, she went back up to prime the system. She turned the key to On, waited for the fuel pump to kick on and off, then switched the key to Off. She did that a few more times, and sitting there, she glimpsed herself in the rearview mirror and was startled to see that she looked older than her twenty-six years, like she’d aged a decade overnight. Her eyelids, in spite of the little bit of makeup she’d put on, were still vaguely puffy from her crying jag the night before. Her mouth was set so hard that tiny lines radiated from her lips; she’d been clenching her teeth. When she relaxed her jaw, her pale cheeks seemed to sag and her mouth turned down at the corners. There was a smudge of grease across her forehead—probably from having pushed her bangs out of her eyes—that resembled her late father’s birthmark. She looked at herself, at his light brown eyes and pale eyelashes, their matching high cheekbones, and felt a gut punch at this unanticipated image of his face in the mirror. An old grief added to the new.
She turned the key all the way, and the Blazer’s engine fired up perfectly.
“Clara! Phone for you!” someone called above the noises in the shop: the hydraulic torque wrench and the air compressor, the glide and slam of toolkit drawers, the relentless clinking of metal, the ever-present laïko music coming from a grease-covered boom box in the corner, the shouts in Greek and English.
She wiped the stain from her forehead with the dirty towel as she walked over to the phone that hung on the wall. Peter’s brother Teddy stopped her with a hand on her forearm.
“It’s Ryan,” he said. “You might want to take it in the office.” Who knew what they’d been saying about her and Ryan. Peter’s mother, Anna, could read her face as though Clara were her own daughter and turn an opinion—I don’t think this Ryan is good for you—into a topic for general discussion. Clara usually found herself offering supporting information without even meaning to, and the entire Kappas family soon knew all her personal business. She didn’t mind, though; they were the closest thing to a real family she’d had in a long time.
Clara nodded. The office was little more than a desk against the wall in the waiting area, between the water cooler and the coffeemaker. It was hardly private, but there weren’t any customers inside at the moment, and Anna, who was behind the counter writing an order for parts, winked at her and said, in her thick accent, “I’ll give you a minute.”
Clara sat down and tried not to look at the flashing caller-on-hold light on the phone. She gazed instead at the framed photos on the wall of the Sporades Islands: the family’s whitewashed villa, the curved rock beach, the impossible turquoise water.
When she could avoid it no longer, she took a deep breath and picked up the line. “Hey,” she said.
“You’re not answering your cell.”
“I’m working.”
“Whatever, Clara. Listen, I’m taking off for a few days so you can pack up your stuff. I really want you to be out by the weekend, okay?”
“Wait, what? Seriously? I thought we were still talking about everything.”
“Clara, did you not hear me last night? I’m tired of waiting for you to make up your mind. You just don’t want what I do.”
“I never said I didn’t want the same thing, I just asked for time.” She turned her body toward the wall. “Ryan, please.”
“I know you needed time, and I’ve tried to give it to you. But I can’t keep putting your needs ahead of mine. I’m ready to move forward. I want a family. I’d like it to be with you, but if it can’t be . . . well, what choice do I have?”
“Look, I love you, Ryan, you know I do. But marriage is a big step. Why can’t we just be together? Why’s everything such a rush?”
“What is it about making this permanent that freaks you out so much? I know you love me. Why can’t you just say yes?”
Clara sighed. She could change this conversation, change her entire life, with just one word. But she couldn’t do it. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Then we’re done. I need you out. I need to move on.”
“So you’re really going to kick me out? After two years you’re giving me, what, four days to move? How do you expect me to do that? And where am I supposed to get the money for it?”
“You know I wouldn’t leave you on the street. I found you an apartment in East Bakersfield. I already put down the first and last months’ rent. I figured this would make things easier.”
“Jesus, Ryan. Couldn’t we have talked about it first? East Bakersfield?”
He made a huffing sound. “Do you really care where you live? It seems like all you really care about is that damn garage.”
She balled the spiral phone cord into her fist, fighting the urge to cry again. Was she crying over losing him? Losing her home? Her own indecision?
“The lease and key are on the kitchen table,” he said. “When you’re out, you can drop your old key through the slot.”
Clara rested her forehead against the wall and exhaled. “So that’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
He paused, they both did, and she wondered if he’d say what he always did at the end of a phone call. You’re my girl—you know that, right? She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t let go. She leaned forward in anticipation, waiting, yearning, yet reluctant to give in.
“Good luck, Clara. I hope you figure out whatever it is you want, I really do. I’m just sorry it wasn’t me.” Then he hung up.
She held the phone against her ear, listening to her heartbeat until the busy signal began beeping. When she turned around, Peter was standing at the door.
“You okay?” he asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Maybe she hadn’t really loved Ryan after all, certainly not how he wanted her to. But she was used to being with him, to having someone to go home to, and life with him had been easy. “Will you help me move?” she asked Peter.
He pulled off his ball cap—Havoline, Protect What Matters—and raked his fingers through his thick black hair. “Of course,” he said, and put the cap back on. “You know I will.”
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