Grace Notes: A Novel

I finished reading this deeply moving novel three days ago and since then have been trying to organize my thoughts and reactions into a sort of review.

What does the title mean? Catherine, the protagonist, is a musician. Grace notes in music are notes that embellish, but do not affect, the melody line. Having a musical background, and having read this book and thought about it, I am not sure what there is anything that embellishes, but does not affect the story line.

Another definition of grace is: simple elegance or refinement, and I think it is more appropriate.
Notes is an equally ambiguous word : musical signs, to observe with care, to put into writing, or to remark or take special mention.

Catherine grew up in a loving, conservative, Catholic family in a town in Northern Ireland. Musically gifted, she leaves home to study in Glasgow, where she finishes with honors. Breaking out of what she sees as the narrowness of her upbringing, she becomes estranged from her parents.
She takes a job teaching music at a school on the island of Islay, Scotland, where she hopes she can devote herself to musical composition. But in her isolation and loneliness, she takes up with a man completely beneath her, and falls pregnant.

The book can be described as two complementary novellas, a novel containing two ending.
In the first, Catherine returns to her parents’ home to attend the funeral of her father. The tension between daughter and mother is palpable, especially when her mother learns for the first time that she has a granddaughter over a year old and still unbaptized. The priest asks Catherine to play the church organ at her father’s funeral service, which on the one hand, relieves her of having to participate in a ceremony of a faith she no longer believes, but yet, on the other, denies her the opportunity to grieve with family and community, regardless how strained their personal relationships are.

The only potentially bright moment while home is visiting her first piano teacher, who is clearly dying.

The first novella ends on a rather bleak note – that one cannot return to one’s childhood home.

The second novella succinctly covers Catherine’s pregnancy and the birth of Anna. and Catherine’s subsequent postpartum depression. Dave, Anna’s alcoholic father, becomes increasingly abusive and violent, such that Catherine steals away with Anna to Glasgow, where they exist in marginal poverty while Catherine devotes herself to composing a piece commissioned by the BBC for a radio program of new artists and “local” music.

The second novella contains a magnificent crescendo, as she composes her piece, revises it with the conductor, sees it through rehearsal, and finally, finally. experiences the exhilaration of the composition’s crowning success.

I did not find found anything extraneous to the melody of the plot, but well-modulated elegance and refinement noted every step of the way.

This book is not what it seems. First: the subject matter is gloomy: composer Catherine McKenna, recovering from a postnatal depression, is returning to violence stricken Northern Ireland for the funeral of her father. Not a glimmer of humour in sight. Seems depressing, but does not leave you depressed. I find that remarkable.
Second: it may also seem a simple little book, with not much happening. But go to the trouble to read between the lines, and you will get a lot in return. Because grace notes are the unobtrusive notes that seemingly hardly have a function, but that in some subtle and undefinable way make a piece of music into something special. MacLaverty writes in this way. His book has the same effect that a beautiful piece music has: you can't tell exactly why, but you are deeply moved by it.
What does happen in this novel is that Catherine must try to reconcile the Northern-Irish heritage she has tried to leave behind with the motherhood she can hardly cope with and reconcile both with her work. In the end it is the music that makes her whole again. In a beautiful finale we are shown the healing effect of art. Not a book for those who want a page-turner, but warmly recommended for those who like a deeply felt and subtle insight into a woman's soul. It is amazing that it was written by a man.

Catherine is an Irish woman who is musical. Her parents notice her talent when she's young and find her a wonderful teacher. She becomes a pianist and a composer. Unfortunately Catherine's parents also share their conflicted relationship and throw in some Catholic angst. MacLaverty got the musical bits exactly right in my opinion. Music is hard to describe in words yet he did so with excellence. There were several pieces I'd never heard of before and based on his descriptions I'm going to search them out notably Janacek's "1905".

I don't want to give spoilers so I'll just say there's a mystery relationship that's referred to throughout the first third of the book. It's a pivotal plot element. MacLaverty unfolds this wonderfully well, enough to keep you interested but not so much that you want to throw the book across the room. This is the first of his books I've read and I can see why he was shortlisted to win the Booker. He writes well, so well that I was surprised when I happened upon a disjoint. These disjoints clashed with the seamlessness of most of the book. I'm sure sometimes he meant to do this but other times it was such an unnecessary blip that I felt it had to be an editing problem. Last there was a psychological condition that just didn't ring true to me; not that the condition doesn't exist but not in the way he wrote about it for this character. Overall this was an enjoyable book especially if you enjoy classical music. Here's one of my favorite quotes from "Grace Notes", "Violas sound like violins with a cold".

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but has lived for many years in Scotland. An accomplished fiction writer, he is the author of two novels: Lamb, and Cal (both of which were made into successful movies), as well as several collections of short stories. This year, his third novel, Grace Notes, was short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize.
Grace Notes is the superbly-written story of Catherine McKenna's difficult relationship with her parents, her doomed love-affair with the man who is the father of her child, and her efforts to achieve personal and artistic freedom. The novel begins with a funeral, and ends with the realization of the protagonist's musical ambitions in the form of the successful performance and radio broadcast of her own musical composition. In between this gloomy, inauspicious opening and this triumphant finale lies the rich and finely nuanced story of this woman's struggle for independence.
The novel opens with Catherine's return from Scotland, where she now lives, to the family home in a small town in Ulster. Her father has recently died, and the visit brings back many memories of her childhood. The story is told and her feelings are conveyed with sensitivity and precision. She has grown apart from her parents over the years, and they have been out of communication for some time. Indeed, the last time she spoke to her father they quarreled, and he forbade her to come back again. For this reason, the homecoming, and the funeral, are especially difficult for both mother and daughter.
Catherine is a gifted composer, and recently went on a study visit to Kiev to study with a famous European composer. Her mother, however, is a religiously devout and uneducated woman, and has little understanding of her daughter's musical ambitions. She is also disheartened by her daughter's indifference to the Catholic Church, in which she was reared. There is a dramatic climax to the tension between the two women when Catherine reveals that she has had a child. Angry and confused, the mother is offended and disappointed, but particularly concerned that the baby has not been baptized: "'What's right is right. You don't want the wee thing to spend an eternity in limbo. If it died.' 'Nobody in their right mind believes that kind of stuff nowadays. . .' 'I do.'"
The novel's second half includes a lengthy flashback to Catherine's life on the Scottish island of Islay, where she worked as a music teacher, and where she met Dave, the English jack-of-all-trades with whom she falls in love. Their relationship is portrayed rather well, but it finally collapses as Dave sinks into alcoholism, and Catherine is left increasingly alone, with baby Anna. Her decision to leave her partner comes to her in a moment of inspiration, as she walks on the beach with Anna. At this time she also hears in her mind the first chords of the composition which will mark her emergence as a fully-fledged musician.
The novel concludes with the orchestral performance of Catherine's Mass, which includes a drumming sequence on "Lambeg Drums" performed by a group of Orangemen, Protestant Loyalists from Northern Ireland, which this Catholic composer has deliberately included as an 'ethnic' component of her music. "The Lambegs have been stripped of their bigotry and have become pure sound.... On this accumulating wave the drumming has a fierce joy about it. Exhilaration comes from nowhere." The symbolism is rich. In the final moments of the Mass, and of the novel, MacLaverty has given us a generous emblem of the harmonizing of those noises, which traditionally in Ireland are thought to be in permanent conflict.
The novel's strength lies in its powerful presentation of the character of Catherine, her intense and abiding love for her child, and her obsessive fascination with music. MacLaverty's language is lucid and supple, and his ear for dialogue, and for colloquial speech, is unmatched in recent Irish fiction.

This book is a short read, but not as easy at is seems at the first sight.
Catherine McKenna is a young girl, an only child struggeling to be free from the bounds the her Northern Irish parents. She has a very special talent for music, and her music teacher from childhood becomes a very special person in her life. She teaches her to read the notes between the notes, the Grace Notes, and this gives special meaning to Catherine's life and music. And also special meaning to the book. The book can be read as words within words, which makes the book full of grace notes.
What fascinates me most with the book is the way Bernard MacLaverty shows us how to read or look at music just like we read or look at paintings. Having read several books about the stories behind Vermeers painting, MacLaverty also uses a Vermeer painting to show music.
I can fully agree with a the reviewer Tobias Hill from The Times: "The strongest impression left by Grace Notes is that of its central image-og the 'notes between the notes' which seem to compose themselves - of a life happening while it's heroine is busy making other plans...If architecture is frozen music, Grace Notes is the literary equivalnt, full of its own powerful rhythm.
Britt Arnhild Lindland

A very disappointing and ordinary book - I cannot believe that it was nominated for a booker prize. You just cannot try to write about music in these terms - certainly most musicians would never do so. The main character was such a whinge, mean, selfish - the relationship with her father never properly explained, Northern Ireland dragged in without any real depth or discussion of it. In particular, he never really explored her use of Lambegs (ostensibly a protestant instrument, but actually used by both sides once) by her (a catholic). The end of the book could have been from a Hollywood Meryl Streep movie. The long, free-form structure of the book didn't work particularly well either - moving from the death of her father back to a birth, and building up to the gestation and performance of a piece which seemed totally unrelated to the opening section of the book. Some good writing, but frustrating and annoying.

Grace Notes was gracefully written and an interesting tender story. It was a delightful read and I highly recommend it!

After reading Cal, I didn't think MacLaverty could come close to that achievement, but Grace Notes was every bit as good.Another tour de force!

Catherine McKenna returns home for a visit to her family in Belfast following the death of her father. The usual tensions still remain in the Provence a closed people at war with eachother the petty minded hatred of one religious side against the other. Against this background we learn of Catherine's career as composer and her rise to fame and adoration that she now receives from an adoring public. A pleasant read but not my favourite by Bernard MacLaverty.

This read was a treat, especially fulfilling to the ear, as the writer uses wonderful and frequent references to sound. Fitting as the protagonist is a gifted young woman composer. Her challenges come at a nice pace and I liked the upside down order of the book. Finding out her current status by the end of Part I, then Part II, going back in time to how she arrived there. The only issue I had with the Kindle edition I read is that there are multiple errors, with l being changed to d, so every adverb is largedy misspelled. Distracting and makes one feel it can't be an important book, yet it is a wonderful novel and will lead me to reading other books by this author.