Skip to main content

Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy: book review





Maestro (1989) is Goldsworthy’s first book, set from 1967 to 1977, embodying the theme of migration and identity for two main characters, one young and the other old.

A young man, Paul Crabbe, at the age of fifteen, is uprooted from Adelaide in the south of Australia to Darwin in the north, by his parents. An older man – now 80, Herr Eduard Keller, was uprooted from Austria as a refugee, and eventually landed in Darwin where he worked from his “home” as a piano teacher. Keller’s home is a weatherboard room above the front bar of The Swan hotel. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke seeps into the room with two pianos: a grand Bosendorfer for the maestro and an upright Wertheim for the student. Paul Crabbe is his student, for one lesson a week.

One day Paul enters the room waiting for his piano lesson. While the maestro is absent he looks at the photograph propped on his teacher’s piano: his son Eric and his wife Mathilde. Not much else is known about the mysterious piano teacher.

At the end of their first year in Darwin, Paul and his family drive five days south to Adelaide to stay with Paul’s grandmother for the summer holidays. He begins a library search to determine who Herr Keller really is. Keller died in 1944, the records reveal.

Back in Darwin, just as he is about to knock on the door for his piano lesson, for the first time Paul hears the maestro play the piano – Wagner’s Tristan. It was brilliant: “nearer to lovemaking than to music.” And in Darwin, Paul learns about that too, in the shape of Megan and Rosie.

Years later, in 1975, in between piano competitions, Paul heads for Vienna, chasing a cellist who claimed to have played with Keller before the war. And it is in Vienna, Herr Keller’s birth place, that Paul discovers the truth about his piano teacher.

Brief, succinct, unembellished, Goldsworthy paints a picture of innocence, that of a sixteen year old boy searching for the truth, yet also of fitting in, settling into a new country, a new city, a new place – a place where a person can leave the past behind.



MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing
1 comment
Read more