Abstract:
The four stories and one essay within are linked by themes: love, sex,
truth, and music. Three of the stories are told by first person narrators who
are also musicians. In "Elementary Music," a young girl views her parents'
divorce through the lens of an orchestra concert in which she participates.
In "Laying on of Hands," a woman contemplates abandoning music for an
imagined love, and in "I Say All That to Say This," a woman finds herself in
love with her pianist, substituting music for sex. In all of these stories
music and the act of performance prompt questions about love and truth.
The essay, "Unsayable Life," addresses questions about the differences
between fiction and life, between living a story and later fashioning it into
art, or artifice. "Grammar is Life" is a direct response to those questions,
featuring a protagonist who tries to gain control over her fear of loneliness
and the future by fashioning her life into grammar lessons. All of these
stories deal with loss on some level; music and the search for truth in
fiction--in art--act as counterpoint against that loss.
