Piano Lessons by Anna Goldsworthy

A memoir of the relationship between pianist Anna Goldsworthy and piano teacher Eleonora Sivan. Anna started lessons with Sivan at age 9, and she chronicles the relationship with her teacher and the lessons she learned about music, life, love, and playing the piano. A good read, very true to the the experience of learning a musical tradition.

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

An excellent novel. Frazier has all the right tools in his arsenal. Nightwoods tells the story of Luce, who inherits her sister's twin children, after her sister is murdered by her husband. The children witness the murder, and are damaged by the experience and the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father. They don't speak, they kill chickens, and they start fires. A suspenseful plot pulls the reader along.

The other significant character is the setting, the mountains of western North Carolina and other areas of the South, from the 1960s. Maybe this is why I enjoyed the novel so much - that is the South of my childhood, and it rang true and vivid for me.

Much better, in my opinion, that Frazier's Cold Mountain or Thirteen Moons. It is violent, but the ending is much more satisfactory than his earlier novels. Highly recommended.