Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Weight of a Piano
Chris Cander
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Weight of a Piano
Chris Cander
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Weight of a Piano, by Chris Cander, is the story of a piano from the time it was a tree. It is also the story about two strong women. Katya is given the piano when she was a young girl living in Russia in 1962. Clara receives it in 2012 when she's living in Bakersfield, California. Clara, a skilled mechanic, lives with her aunt and uncle. Her parents have both died in a terrible fire that destroyed their house. Her uncle owns the auto shop where she works. She doesn’t know how to play piano and decides to sell it. She is sent $5,000 dollars by a photographer in New York who wants to buy it. She changes her mind and rents it to him for a photo shoot he wants to do.
When we revisit Katya in Russia, we see that her husband, Mikhail, has given the piano to a ballet impresario to smuggle drugs out of the country so that he and Katya can flee to America during these troubled times in Russia. Mikhail is Jewish and has lost his job, though he is a skilled engineer. Author Cander gives the piano a voice through which we see the feelings of these characters. She makes the reader care about the fate of the piano and of Katya and Clara. When Katya, Mikhail, and their son, Grisha, get to America, they take a day trip to Death Valley. Mikhail loses a lot of money gambling there and takes Polaroid photos of Katya that look as bleak as the landscape. Katya looks at them frequently wishing to be back in St. Petersburg. She receives a letter from Boris, the smuggler, which tells her the piano has been repaired at UCLA, and is ready to be returned to her. She is elated.
Author Cander beautifully weaves together Clara and Katya, their cultures, and their countries. Grisha, Katya’s little son, listens to his mother practice scales on the piano and her favorite piece, a Scriabin sonata. With a sharp nail, he scratches his name on the piano’s side. Clara meets Greg when he picks up her piano with the movers. She jumps into her car and follows the truck to the highway leading to Death Valley where he plans to take his photos. Clara follows him as he photographs the piano in all of Death Valley’s beauty as they bounce along the rocky roads.
When Mikhail finds a letter from Katya’s piano student whom Katya truly loves, he slams a fireplace poker onto the piano and on Grisha’s leg, breaking the femur. Greg confesses all this to Clara, and they realize her father and his mother were lovers. Will Clara and Greg stay together as they travel the Valley? Will Clara go home to her former friend, Peter, and work in the auto shop? What will happen to Katya,? Who was her student/lover? Find this beautiful book on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.
When we revisit Katya in Russia, we see that her husband, Mikhail, has given the piano to a ballet impresario to smuggle drugs out of the country so that he and Katya can flee to America during these troubled times in Russia. Mikhail is Jewish and has lost his job, though he is a skilled engineer. Author Cander gives the piano a voice through which we see the feelings of these characters. She makes the reader care about the fate of the piano and of Katya and Clara. When Katya, Mikhail, and their son, Grisha, get to America, they take a day trip to Death Valley. Mikhail loses a lot of money gambling there and takes Polaroid photos of Katya that look as bleak as the landscape. Katya looks at them frequently wishing to be back in St. Petersburg. She receives a letter from Boris, the smuggler, which tells her the piano has been repaired at UCLA, and is ready to be returned to her. She is elated.
Author Cander beautifully weaves together Clara and Katya, their cultures, and their countries. Grisha, Katya’s little son, listens to his mother practice scales on the piano and her favorite piece, a Scriabin sonata. With a sharp nail, he scratches his name on the piano’s side. Clara meets Greg when he picks up her piano with the movers. She jumps into her car and follows the truck to the highway leading to Death Valley where he plans to take his photos. Clara follows him as he photographs the piano in all of Death Valley’s beauty as they bounce along the rocky roads.
When Mikhail finds a letter from Katya’s piano student whom Katya truly loves, he slams a fireplace poker onto the piano and on Grisha’s leg, breaking the femur. Greg confesses all this to Clara, and they realize her father and his mother were lovers. Will Clara and Greg stay together as they travel the Valley? Will Clara go home to her former friend, Peter, and work in the auto shop? What will happen to Katya,? Who was her student/lover? Find this beautiful book on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.