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Book review on a music memoir by environmental policy reporter

Date published: 3/23/2008

TOLSTOY wrote: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Many consider the opening of "Anna Karenina" literature's greatest first line.

Sometimes the members of my book group become deadlocked when choosing among book nominees for our monthly selection. Often we resort to the "first-line test" to make our pick.

The book candidate with the most compelling first line of text, as voted by the membership, is chosen as the next reading assignment.

Our group will have to give serious consideration to Perry Knize's new music memoir "Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey." It, too, features a formidable first line:

"In the autumn of my 43rd year, I remembered, quite unexpectedly, that I was meant to be a pianist."

That line contains a nice sense of irony, a gently rhythmic writing touch, a bit of foreshadowing--and a tip of the hat to the middle-age crazies.

Knize's ode to the piano, would also pass a last-line test with flying colors:

"And together, my piano and I take flight."

Knize's writing soars throughout this account of her musical journey. It gives her nonfiction a structure and sustains the suspenseful inevitability that propels the narrative.

"Grand Obsession" is, at its heart, the old "girl meets piano, girl falls in love with piano, girl marries piano and lives happily ever after" story.

But the piano doesn't cooperate. Its sound, "like moonlight on water like mists floating along the river in early autumn" soon becomes shrill and bright.

Efforts to reclaim the old tone are fruitless. Piano tunings, as it turns out, are transitory, ephemeral. The piano tuner who originally voiced the piano explains: "A piano tuning is a myriad of tiny little lies brought together into one great big lie of being in tune."

Jean Calloway, a Spotsylvania County piano instructor adds: "When a tuner tunes, he's untuning. If it's in perfect tune--all 88 keys-- [bass and treble] wouldn't sound good together."

Instead of reaching back into her past for the keys to her "dis-chord," Knize embarks on a quest she hopes will bring her peace and harmony. Her travels take her to Europe, where she traces her piano's origins.

From first line to last, "Grand Obsession" maintains a marvelous consistency of tone, never hitting a false note.

And the book's simple and elegant dust jacket certainly won't hurt its chances with my reading group.

Kurt Rabin is a copy editor at The Free Lance-Star.

GRAND OBSESSION A Piano OdysseyBy Perri Knize (Scribner, $27.50)

Date published: 3/23/2008