Partita

The landmark new novel from the global bestseller and double winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction, Barbara Kingsolver, author of Demon Copperhead. - A song without any answer in it? That's the sound of waiting. Livia Bohusz misses her brother, Cyrus. Unmoored by his death, and the stifling silence of the family farm, eleven-year-old Livia has no choice but to survive. Her only solace: music, an escape in the quiet rapture piano practice brings. The promise of a new life her talent offers, intoxicating. So when Livia starts her college music scholarship it feels as if a new life might begin. Immersing herself in her passions in a world where she excels, even as she struggles to fit in with more urbane classmates, she glimpses the possibilities of a life beyond the farm and her parents. Then one springtime, as the smell of reviving grass and crocuses and the sounds of songbirds fill the air, Livia catches a glimpse of shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, muscles you wouldn't miss in the rear view: 'Who is that man?' It is a question Livia may come to wish she had never asked. From one of our greatest writers comes Livia's story, Partita, both a coming-of-age narrative and an examination of midlife hopes and regrets, a novel as simple as love and longing, as touching, complex and finely tuned as the music it celebrates.