The final section, however, a live radio concert of Catherine's piece, is a triumph for both woman composer and male author. When dogs pissed at the door the dark lines ran diagonally to the gutter.' These transcend the occasional passage in which MacLaverty tries too hard to see into the life and rhythms of a female artist. It is a story situated during one of the most difficult periods in Irish history, the time known as 'the Troubles,' when Northern Ireland was divided between Loyalist and Republican camps who envisioned very different futures for their country. Her return to Belfast for her father's funeral brings back several ghosts, among them an influential professor who spoke of grace notes-'the notes between the notes.' This novel is full of such instances, wry snatches of conversation and unforgettable observations: the new Chinese restaurant that has had to offer chips to stay in business, or the pub that's 'on a slight hill. Cal is a 1983 novel by the Northern Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty. Like the town was under a canopy of dark noise.' Though her fellow Catholics see the drums as instruments of threat, Catherine is determined to integrate them into her composition. Returning to Belfast after a long absense, to attend her fathers funeral. Catherine's newest piece, a mass, includes the huge drums Protestants play in parades. Grace Notes - Bernard MacLaverty - Google Books. Grace Notes, MacLaverty's first novel since Cal, is as much about Irish identity-and possibility-as it is about art. McKenna's impatient rejoinder, 'You don't cope with music, you listen to it.'

Bernard MacLaverty renders both sides of the equation: Catherine's feminist and aesthetic striving and her mother's more traditional grasp it's hard not to sympathize with Mrs. a remarkable novel.Composer Catherine McKenna has more of a gift for music than happiness, but she has long been driven beyond harmonies (musical and personal) that her Belfast family can understand. What a wonderful writer is!'â€”Andrea BarrettÂ 'More ambitious than any of his previous work. Compelling.'â€”Dennis McFarland, author of The Music Room 'I was reminded of the way Joyce Cary so brilliantly portrayed a painter's life in The Horse's Mouth. a magnificent portrait of the sources and ends, wretchedness and rewards, of creativity.'â€”Sunday Times 'Page after page something delighted and moved me-marvelous, vivid tours of emotion, intelligence, poetry-every step of the way. 'MacLaverty summons up a time and a place with an unerring exactness reminiscent of Joyce's Dubliners. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna â€” estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated field. The award-winning Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art.

Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty