Amy Scribner

FictionHistorical FictionHistorical Fantasy

The Water Dancer

Review by Amy Scribner

Hiram was born into “tasking”—what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls slavery in this beautiful, wrenching novel—but he has always stood slightly apart from the other people who are “Tasked” on the Virginian estate called Lockless. 

The son of an enslaved woman named Rose, Hiram learned early in life that his father was the Lockless master, Howell Walker. Although Hiram worked in the apple orchards and the main house, he had something the other Tasked would never dream of: lessons from the Walker family tutor. But the lessons were no gift. Howell Walker’s plan was to prepare Hiram to spend his life caring for his older half-brother, Maynard, the charmless, dull heir to Lockless. A naturally smart child, Hiram subdued his thirst for knowledge. “I knew what happened to coloreds who were too curious about the world beyond Virginia,” he says.

Driving Maynard home one night from the horse races, Hiram is thinking of nothing but his “desire for an escape from Maynard and the doom of his mastery. And then it came.” Hiram doesn’t know why a strange mist comes up off the river or why the bridge falls away, revealing his long-gone mother dancing. 

He later learns this is Conduction, the rare ability to transport oneself on the power of memories. It’s a prized skill that recruiters on the Underground Railroad hope Hiram will put to use for their cause. They move him to Philadelphia, where he is shocked to see for the first time people of all colors mingling freely. He works to harness his gift of Conduction, while still feeling the pull of his people who have been sold and scattered throughout the South.

The Water Dancer confronts our bitter history and its violence and ugliness, which still resonate generations later. Coates’ fierce, thought-provoking essays on race composed We Were Eight Years in Power and the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me. Here he weaves a clear-eyed story that has elements of magic but is grounded in a profoundly simple truth: A person’s humanity is tied to their freedom.

“Breathing,” Hiram says. “I just dream of breathing.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel is grounded in a profoundly simple truth: A person’s humanity is tied to their freedom.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Last Train to London

Review by Amy Scribner

In the devastating The Last Train to London, bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton brings to life the true story of Truus Wijsmuller, a Dutch woman who helped transport hundreds of Jewish children out of Austria as countries closed their borders to these youngest refugees. Wijsmuller, known as Aunt Truus to the many children she shepherded to safety, fought bureaucracy and apathy with steely determination to get as many children as possible out of the Nazis’ grip.

It was dangerous and frustrating work, but Wijsmuller believed it was her calling. “Perhaps this is why God chose to deny us children,” she said to her husband. “Because there would be this greater need, this chance to save so many. Perhaps He’s saved us the burden of having to choose to risk leaving our own children motherless.”

On a trip to Vienna soon after occupation, she gets an unfathomably cruel offer from Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann: Gather exactly 600 Jewish children in one week, and they can be transported by train out of Nazi-occupied Vienna, with no guarantees of reunification with their families. It came to be known as the Kindertransport, and the details of how Wijsmuller and her partners pulled it off are unforgettable. Clayton depicts an all-too-relevant story of cruelty in its many forms, from the casual nastiness of Gestapo taunts to the violence of nighttime home raids. The book is haunted with images of traumatized children caring for each other on packed train cars, of a teenage boy hiding in the sewer tunnels below Vienna to avoid being sent to a labor camp.

In a time when many parents are again facing the impossible choice of seeking safety for their children, even if it means separation and uncertainty, The Last Train to London reads like a warning note from the past. Yet the novel also glimmers with hope: the heroism of everyday people putting their own comfortable lives in jeopardy to help others.

In the devastating The Last Train to London, bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton brings to life the true story of Truus Wijsmuller, a Dutch woman who helped transport hundreds of Jewish children out of Austria as countries closed their borders to these youngest refugees.

Fiction

Is There Still Sex in the City?

Review by Amy Scribner

The answer to the titular question of Candace Bushnell’s new book is an emphatic no, not really.

There is divorce in the city. There are $4,000 facials in the city. There is still a tight-knit group of ride-or-die girlfriends in the city. But sex? Not so much.

In this amiable if slightly unfocused follow-up to Sex and the City, the iconic 1990s bible for single-girl life in Manhattan, we check in with Bushnell as she closes out her 50s. (How is this possible?) She is living on the Upper East Side, with a fixer-upper home in a Hamptons beach town she calls the Village. She has divorced, lost her mother and is settling into late middle age as a single woman with two large poodles. Even after a series of bestsellers, she struggles to pay the bills. It’s not what Bushnell planned for her life, and one can understand her occasional dip into melancholy.

“It didn’t used to be this way,” Bushnell writes. “At one time, fiftysomething meant the beginning of retirement—working less, slowing down, spending more time on hobbies and with your friends, who like you, were sliding into a more leisurely lifestyle. . . . They weren’t expected to exercise, start new business ventures, move to a different state, have casual sex with strangers, get arrested, and start all over again, except with one-tenth of the resources and in many cases going back to the same social and economic situation that they spent all of their thirties and forties trying to crawl out of.”

As Bushnell paints a picture of how women navigate aging, she can lapse into overgeneralized and sometimes contradictory statements. Her friends are all hormonal victims of what she calls middle-age madness, or MAM, fighting with each other and drinking too much. Yet they also are suddenly finding themselves “catnip for younger men.” She calls this phenomenon cubbing: younger men in pursuit of older women.

But the effervescent Bushnell still has the ability to make readers laugh with her casually dry one-liners. “MAM had moved on and I was in a good place,” she writes. “I was doing the stuff they always tell middle-aged people to do. I was ‘staying active,’ ‘eating healthy,’ and I wasn’t drinking ‘too much.’ I always made sure to fill up my rosé glass with ice.”

Toward the end of Is There Still Sex in the City?, Bushnell starts dating a dashing guy she refers to as My New Boyfriend (or MNB—girlfriend loves an acronym). It is a perfectly satisfying arc in this, the companion to a book that defined love and friendship for a generation of women. One can’t help but root for her.

The answer to the titular question of Candace Bushnell’s new book is an emphatic no, not really.

FictionSatire

Bunny

Review by Amy Scribner

“Bunny” is the cloyingly sweet pet name shared by four young women in Samantha’s MFA program. They even look sweet. Samantha has her own names for the Bunnies: She calls one “Cupcake” because “she looks like a cupcake. Dresses like a cupcake. Gives off the scent of baked lemony sugar. Pretty in a way that reminds you of frosting flourishes. She looks so much like a cupcake that when I first met her at orientation, I had a very real desire to eat her.”

They are the worst kind of friend group: cliquish, self-obsessed, prim, moneyed, privileged. But when they invite tall, awkward Samantha to a “smut salon,” she is curious despite herself. What could these cardigan-clad ladies—whose idea of a helpful fiction critique is clasping hands while proclaiming, Can I just say I loved living in your lines and that’s where I want to live forever now?—possibly know about smut? When Samantha arrives at a Bunny’s apartment for the event, she finds herself in the middle of a fever dream of an evening, with drinks and visits from her past and more drinks. As Samantha gets drawn into their circle, she learns that sometimes sweet is just a cover for something much more sinister.

Mona Awad made her mark with her acclaimed debut novel, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, a striking, at times heartbreaking examination of how body image affects modern life. Bunny is an astonishingly self-assured next step, a surreal journey into the depths of a nightmare. Awad’s writing is somehow both gorgeous and gritty as she explores creativity, art and the universal desire to belong.

“Bunny” is the cloyingly sweet pet name shared by four young women in Samantha’s MFA program. They even look sweet. Samantha has her own names for the Bunnies: She calls one “Cupcake” because “she looks like a cupcake. Dresses like a cupcake. Gives off the scent of baked lemony sugar. Pretty in a way that reminds you of frosting flourishes. She looks so much like a cupcake that when I first met her at orientation, I had a very real desire to eat her.”

More Than Enough

Review by Amy Scribner

As the youngest ever editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue—and the first African American—Elaine Welteroth has spent her career defying expectations. Just 29 when she was appointed editor by the legendary Anna Wintour, Welteroth guided the publication in a more inclusive, modern direction, working to ensure the pages included more representation of women of color and moved beyond makeup and fashion to cover politics, racial justice and gender identity.

In More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say), Welteroth retraces her California childhood with a white dad and a black mom and her lingering feeling of “otherness” coming from a mixed-race background. She writes about the way she learned her particular brand of scrappy journalism from years covering beauty and fashion, first at Ebony magazine and then at Glamour. When she joined the hallowed halls of Teen Vogue as its first black beauty director, those halls were, well, quiet compared the raucous camaraderie and creativity of her previous gigs. And the office lacked the diversity Welteroth had previously experienced.

“Finding my voice and my confidence in a predominantly White office to pitch stories that pushed the envelope, that tackled issues that mattered to my community, and that challenged the status quo—that would take more time to cultivate,” she writes.

Welteroth pushes the envelope throughout the book, pitching stories beyond lip gloss and tanning lotion to cover topics like ethnic hair and cultural appropriation. When Welteroth is offered the position of editor-in-chief, but not the salary or corner office commensurate with the title, she has to learn how to advocate for herself in a world that still undervalues women of color.

“In the press, I was being held up as a symbol of progress and exalted publicly as a token win for diversity (again),” she writes. “But behind the scenes I had been asked, on the spot, to assume an ill-defined position that broke from a tradition that I felt devalued my role.”

Welteroth makes her mark not only on the publication but also on the industry. More Than Enough is a beautifully honest look at the exhilaration and heavy weight that comes with breaking barriers. Welteroth didn’t set out to shatter ceilings, but she is a force of nature. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

More Than Enough is a beautifully honest look at the exhilaration and heavy weight that comes with breaking barriers.
FictionPopular Fiction

A Good Enough Mother

Review by Amy Scribner

Is there any experience more transformative than motherhood? It changes not just a woman’s body but also her very outlook on life. Somehow, everything becomes both sweeter and more frightening. Ruth Hartland experienced the intensity of motherhood twice over with the birth of her twins, Carolyn and Tom. Her daughter is outgoing and self-assured, easily navigating school and friendships. But Tom is anxious and painfully sensitive, never quite finding his place in the world.

When Tom disappears at 17, Ruth enters a hellish limbo, with days “when missing him feels like a hole in my chest.” She throws herself into her work as a highly respected therapist, tucking away her own personal turmoil as she works with people recovering from trauma. But how well can she ignore her own pain while helping others work through theirs? 

Ruth starts treating a new patient, a young man recovering from a brutal assault. He bears a striking resemblance to Tom, a professional red flag Ruth chooses to ignore. She knows she can help this traumatized boy, even though she couldn’t help Tom. As Ruth finds herself crossing professional boundaries to help the troubled young man, the relationship hurdles toward unimaginable tragedy.

Bev Thomas, herself a psychologist, paints a sympathetic portrait of a grieving mother—one with no body to bury—and the choices she makes just to survive. A Good Enough Mother is both a heartbreaking story of love and loss and a hopeful meditation on the winding path to healing.

 

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article misnamed the author.

Is there any experience more transformative than motherhood? It changes not just a woman’s body but also her very outlook on life. Somehow, everything becomes both sweeter and more frightening. Ruth Hartland experienced the intensity of motherhood twice over with the birth of her twins, Carolyn and Tom. Her daughter is outgoing and self-assured, easily navigating school and friendships. But Tom is anxious and painfully sensitive, never quite finding his place in the world.

NonfictionMemoir

Women’s Work

Review by Amy Scribner

As a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Megan K. Stack lived a life defined by her career. Like so many women before her, Stack was unprepared for the jolt of trading in that work for the work of motherhood. When she left her job to give birth to her son, Max, in Beijing, Stack realized her new reality.

“I’d slaved and slashed and elbowed to maintain that job, but in the end I’d let it go like a balloon, rolling in my mouth the rare flavor of a bold gamble,” she writes in Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home. 

Stack, whose previous book, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, had imagined quiet days of working on her novel while her newborn son slept, angelic and obedient, until she was ready for him to awaken. She had not imagined colic, hormones and sleep deprivation that was almost physically painful. To add insult to injury, her journalist husband, Tom, “had slipped easily back into his old life while I had been bombed back to some prehistoric version of myself. And I was angry that he had accepted this superior position, this lesser disruption, as sort of a birthright.”

Enter Xiao Li, the first in a series of nannies, cooks and cleaners who help Stack find equilibrium. But like most women who hire help, Stack felt a deep uneasiness that she couldn’t do it all herself. And while Stack paid Xiao Li a good wage, it was for work that took Xiao Li away from her own young daughter. Xiao Li later admits she would sometimes pretend Max was her own baby to take away the sting of separation. It’s an uncomfortable truth that moms who work need help and that help mostly comes from lower-income women. That transaction comes at a price beyond money.

Furthermore, dads seem to navigate these issues without the noose of guilt, and Tom is no exception. He comes across as a bit of a schmuck, complaining about the quality of Xiao Li’s cooking and insisting that he can’t take even half a day off so Stack can finish a draft.

When the family moves to India for Tom’s job, Stack is in charge of setting up the household and finding help while again pregnant. In Delhi, Stack truly becomes aware of the hardships facing the women she employs: alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty. She delves into their stories with searing honesty and self-reflection. 

Women’s Work is a brave book, an unflinching examination of privilege and the tradeoffs all women make in the name of family. 

Women’s Work is a brave book, an unflinching examination of privilege and the tradeoffs all women make in the name of family. 

NonfictionMemoirFashion

I.M.

Review by Amy Scribner

In the 1995 documentary Unzipped, Isaac Mizrahi is a flurry of genius, spouting ideas and stories and impersonations. He’s a fashion designer at the height of his fame, smoking cigarettes and hanging with his pals Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. His wonderfully introspective new memoir, I.M., makes clear that Mizrahi is still the same creative force of nature, just polished down and with more years under his well-crafted belt.

The youngest of three children in a conservative Brooklyn family, Mizrahi was an outlier from the get-go. “The Syrian-Jewish community had never seen anything like me before,” he writes. “I stuck out like a chubby gay thumb.” While his peers were playing ball, Mizrahi was sewing costumes for his puppet shows and belting out Liza Minnelli tunes. He was perhaps destined to be a designer: His mother subscribed religiously to Women’s Wear Daily, and his father manufactured children’s clothing. But while his parents could tolerate—even nurture—his creativity, their hearts were not open to the possibility of a gay son. He thrived at Parsons, an elite Manhattan design school, but essentially lived a double life for years throughout the late 1970s and early ’80s: dutiful Jewish son at home, openly gay man in the city.

Even as he struggled with his personal identity, Mizrahi’s star rose as he worked at Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein and opened his own atelier. He gained a reputation as the rare male designer who really understood women and their bodies, in part because of conversations with his mother about fashion. “Any kind of fashion sets down its demand for a singular kind of perfection; one way or the highway,” he writes. “It translates essentially as one large punishment on women. Only recently are we beginning to acknowledge that beauty is a broad subject, one in which all people can participate.”

I.M. is as generous a memoir as I can remember. Mizrahi lays bare his struggles with body image, insomnia and relationships. He meditates on the fickle nature of the fashion industry and spills a little tea on his many celebrity friends. The book is like a classic Mizrahi design: joyful, colorful and always with a twist of the unexpected.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Isaac Mizrahi.

In the 1995 documentary Unzipped, Isaac Mizrahi is a flurry of genius, spouting ideas and stories and impersonations. He’s a fashion designer at the height of his fame, smoking cigarettes and hanging with his pals Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. His wonderfully introspective new memoir, I.M., makes clear that Mizrahi is still the same creative force of nature, just polished down and with more years under his well-crafted belt.

Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

An Anonymous Girl

Review by Amy Scribner

“Often the most effective psychological studies are rooted in deception. For example, a subject can be led to believe he or she is being evaluated for one behavior when, in fact, the psychologist has engineered this decoy to measure something else entirely.”

So explains Dr. Lydia Shields, the beautiful, deeply disturbed therapist who hooks an unsuspecting woman into a study with a sinister ulterior motive.

Jessica Farris is her unwitting subject. Jess is barely eking out an existence as a New York City makeup artist, sending as much money as she can back to Philadelphia for her parents and disabled younger sister. After an abusive experience with a former employer, Jess has closed herself off from meaningful relationships, instead seeking one-night encounters with men she meets in bars. She sneaks into Dr. Shields’ study to make some extra cash, not knowing she will become a pawn in a twisted marital game that’s already wrecked lives.

The women have just one thing in common: childhood decisions that had catastrophic results for their families. But while Jess’ remorse drives her, Dr. Shields glides through life certain the ends justify the means. She preys upon Jess’ guilt and self-doubt, sending her on a series of increasingly dangerous tasks, to help determine whether her husband is cheating.

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen previously teamed up to write the deliciously creepy The Wife Between Us. It defies reason that two authors—living in different cities!—can create one seamless story, but they deliver again with An Anonymous Girl. It’s a taut exploration of marriage and manipulation. Dr. Shields is a chilling psycho for the ages, speaking in passive, detached language. Jess finds herself in a race to outwit a woman trained in matters of the mind.

“Often the most effective psychological studies are rooted in deception. For example, a subject can be led to believe he or she is being evaluated for one behavior when, in fact, the psychologist has engineered this decoy to measure something else entirely.”

So explains Dr.…

NonfictionBiography

Queen Victoria

Review by Amy Scribner

During her unprecedented 63-year reign, Queen Victoria grew up in front of the nation she led. After a gloomy and isolated childhood, she happily married her cousin Albert and gave birth to nine children. She reigned through multiple global conflicts and survived assassination attempts. Her popularity waxed and waned.

The subject of countless books, television shows and movies (who else has been portrayed by Emily Blunt and Dame Judy Dench?), Victoria is the very definition of an icon. Her correspondence and diaries have been pored over since her death in 1901 at age 81. But what is left to say about the much-documented life of Queen Victoria, perhaps the most scrutinized of monarchs?

Historian Lucy Worsley manages to offer a fresh look by focusing on 24 days throughout the monarch’s life. By zooming in on key dates to examine Victoria as a queen, wife and mother, the book is simultaneously fast-paced and substantial. Some scholars have tried to reframe Victoria as a feminist, a strong leader decades ahead of her time. But Worsley concludes Victoria was deeply traditional, gladly allowing Albert to influence her political decisions, parenting style and even home décor. Theirs was a complicated yet symbiotic relationship. Victoria struggled with depression, including after several of her pregnancies when she felt “lowness and tendency to cry.” Albert was a generally restrained man, and he encouraged Victoria to repress her own emotions. “Slowly, gradually, she began to check her feelings, to avoid angering or clashing with Albert,” Worsley writes. Victoria herself wrote, “My chief and great anxiety is—peace in the House. . . . God only knows how I love him. His position is difficult, heaven knows, and we must do everything to make it easier.”

Worsley’s portrait of the queen is unflinching. One can barely fault Victoria for being at times self-centered and bristly—her childhood was one marked by solitude and scheming adults who saw her as little more than a symbol of their own potential future power. Yet through Worsley’s clear-eyed and graceful writing, we also see a woman aiming to do right by her subjects and her family, even within the confines of the times.

During her unprecedented 63-year reign, Queen Victoria grew up in front of the nation she led. After a gloomy and isolated childhood, she happily married her cousin Albert and gave birth to nine children. She reigned through multiple global conflicts and survived assassination attempts. Her popularity waxed and waned.

FictionPopular Fiction

Nine Perfect Strangers

Review by Amy Scribner

The Tranquillum House seems like the ideal place for rest, relaxation and repair. Owned by Masha, a former high-powered executive who switched careers after a heart attack, the bucolic wellness center is a refuge for broken souls with deep pockets.

There’s Frances, the semifamous romance novelist who is hitting a midcareer slump; Jessica and Ben, lottery winners whose good fortune is ruining their marriage; the Marconi family, reeling from the loss of their son; and Carmel, a mother of four daughters whose husband left her for a younger woman. They’ve all gathered for 10 massage- and hike-filled days at the center.

But Masha is toying with introducing a new protocol to her strictly regimented program. It’s risky, but if it yields the results she expects, it’ll put Tranquillum House—and her—on the map. If it fails, it could put her guests in danger. As the guests start to suspect they’re getting more than they paid for, they must decide how much they’re willing to do in the name of wellness.

Liane Moriarty is simply unparalleled at infusing flawed characters with humor and heartbreak. Her singular brand of storytelling was most recently showcased when her bestselling novel Big Little Lies was made into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries. Nine Perfect Strangers is a worthy follow-up, offering an irresistible take on our wellness-obsessed culture, where the weirder the treatment, the better.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Tranquillum House seems like the ideal place for rest, relaxation and repair. Owned by Masha, a former high-powered executive who switched careers after a heart attack, the bucolic wellness center is a refuge for broken souls with deep pockets.

Memoir

Dear America,

Review by Amy Scribner

“This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like me find ourselves in,” writes America’s most famous undocumented immigrant. “This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by.”

Faced with poverty and few choices, Jose Antonio Vargas’ mother sent him from the Philippines to Los Angeles to live with his grandparents when he was 12. Vargas had no idea he was undocumented until he applied for a driver’s permit at age 16.

“This is fake,” the DMV employee whispered to him after examining his green card. “Don’t come back here again.”

Vargas found himself in a legal no-man’s land: His passport and green card were fake. He couldn’t go back to the Philippines without potentially getting his legally residing California relatives in trouble for lying. Even with these tremendous barriers, Vargas took advantage of the opportunities he did have. He tirelessly studied, and with the support of friends, made it through college and into the world of journalism. He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Yet despite years as a productive, law-abiding and taxpaying American resident, Vargas has no way of becoming an American citizen. He cannot access government-funded health care, vote, get financial aid for higher education or get a passport. He is constantly told to “get in line” and become a citizen the right way, even though our byzantine policies provide no road for him to do so. In June 2011, the New York Times Magazine published Vargas’ essay about his life as an undocumented immigrant. Overnight, Vargas became the face of one of the most divisive issues in America today.

Dear America, is a clarion call for humanity in a time of unprecedented focus on the 11 million people living in America without a clear path to citizenship. Vargas writes passionately about the undeniable intersection between race, class and immigration and traces the bitter history of American immigration policy. He speaks on behalf of our neighbors, our colleagues, those undocumented humans we interact with every day—often unknowingly—who are part of our community while always standing on the outside.

“This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like me find ourselves in,” writes America’s most famous undocumented immigrant. “This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by.”
FictionHistorical Fiction

Love Is Blind

Review by Amy Scribner

Brodie Moncur, the protagonist of William Boyd’s latest novel, has a gift: His perfect pitch and attention to detail make him a once-in-a-generation piano tuner, employable anywhere in the world. He takes his skills from Edinburgh to Paris and St. Petersburg, working with some of the most renowned musicians of the late 19th century. Even bloody bouts of tuberculosis don’t dim his prospects.

But his brilliance is threatened by his love for an unattainable woman. Lika Blum, a mediocre Russian singer, lives with John Kilbarron, one of Brodie’s main clients. Brodie is drawn to Lika’s blonde beauty, her kindness and the way she fills him with contentment “like a powerful liquor; like some ambrosial, aphrodisiacal tonic invading every blood vessel and capillary in his body.”

Soon enough, though, it becomes clear that Brodie gives in to his feelings at his own peril. Kilbarron is a drunk and a drug user, and his manager brother is not above threats to get the best deal for his brother—and himself. After their illicit love affair turns deadly, Brodie and Lika find themselves on the run across Europe, and Lika faces a terrible choice to ensure her lover’s safety.

Boyd, the author of more than a dozen novels, including Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa, is exceptionally good at evoking a vivid sense of place. He takes us to the gloomy Scottish countryside and the Mediterranean shores of Nice, enveloping the reader in a time in European history when horses are being replaced by cars, women still have few choices, and men can settle their feuds without the interference of law. Love Is Blind is a cautionary tale in how passion can both lift up and destroy lives.

Brodie Moncur, the protagonist of William Boyd’s latest novel, has a gift: His perfect pitch and attention to detail make him a once-in-a-generation piano tuner, employable anywhere in the world. He takes his skills from Edinburgh to Paris and St. Petersburg, working with some of the most renowned musicians of the late 19th century. Even bloody bouts of tuberculosis don’t dim his prospects.

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