Rating: 
Summary: Grace notes out of tune...
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully complex and well layered.
Review: As a pianist, I have a special fondness for this struggling artist. This is an extremely well written book, insightful and complex. The way the author layered everything together and then wrapped it up in the symphony at the end of the book was beautifully done.
Rating:
Summary: Heart-felt. (Review written by a 14 year old)
Review: Being 14, I don't yet know much of the world but this book certainly struck a note in me. Mac Laverty describes with utmost clarity and certainty what it is like to be a mother. I praise his exellence and reccommend this book to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Superb novel
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Music, a celebration of life
Review: Bernard MacLaverty's "Grace Notes" is a truly absorbing piece of work by one of Ireland's most promising modern writers. It is introspective yet never oblique or indulgent in the way the study of "interiors" has a tendency to be in lesser hands. For Catherine McKenna, a struggling music composer estranged from her parents in Belfast and bringing up her little daughter Anna as a single parent in Glasgow, music is a celebration and a transmutation of the pulse of ordinary life, from childbirth pangs to the sounds of nature. There is a beautiful passage in there which likens the experience of childbirth to an orchestral performance of a musical composition. The prelude is all but theory and practice. You have to experience it to understand its relevance and impact. "Vernicle", the Mass that Catherine finishes, is inspired by her life's highs and lows and the product of her adherence to her teacher's advocacy of the practice of "pre-hearing" and the ability to catch the "notes between the notes". MacLaverty has written a novel that is at once subtle, reflective, poignant and uplifting. It is a consummate achievement that's worthy of its Booker prize award nomination. Not to be missed !
Rating:
Summary: Music, a celebration of life
Review: Bernard MacLaverty's "Grace Notes" is a truly absorbing piece of work by one of Ireland's most promising modern writers. It is introspective yet never oblique or indulgent in the way the study of "interiors" has a tendency to be in lesser hands. For Catherine McKenna, a struggling music composer estranged from her parents in Belfast and bringing up her little daughter Anna as a single parent in Glasgow, music is a celebration and a transmutation of the pulse of ordinary life, from childbirth pangs to the sounds of nature. There is a beautiful passage in there which likens the experience of childbirth to an orchestral performance of a musical composition. The prelude is all but theory and practice. You have to experience it to understand its relevance and impact. "Vernicle", the Mass that Catherine finishes, is inspired by her life's highs and lows and the product of her adherence to her teacher's advocacy of the practice of "pre-hearing" and the ability to catch the "notes between the notes". MacLaverty has written a novel that is at once subtle, reflective, poignant and uplifting. It is a consummate achievement that's worthy of its Booker prize award nomination. Not to be missed !
Rating: 
Summary: Music in Words
Review: Each year, I await the Booker Prize shortlist with baited breath. My personal taste tends to run pretty close to that of the panel, and some of my favorite books have been winners of the award. So, I approached Grace Notes, a "frontrunner" for this year's prize, anticipating a great read. By and large, MacLaverty delivered. His protagonist is a profoundly depressed young woman who makes her way to the light through the power of music, and specifically through the act of composition. Along the way, she overcomes the death of her father, the constriction of her Irish Catholic upbringing, and the disappointment of a failed relationship that leaves her a single mother. MacLaverty's description of her depression is truly masterful, and the best literary evocation of mental illness that I have encountered in some time. Similarly, the climactic passage where she emerges from her darkness has the emotional impact of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth. And yet...I found the two major sections of the book to be of uncertain relationship one to the other. I couldn't even place them in the correct chronological order. This discontinuity detracted from my otherwise great pleasure. A good book, worth a read, but not a great one and, I think, not a Booker Prize winner.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, touching read!
Review: Grace Notes was gracefully written and an interesting tender story. It was a delightful read and I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, touching read!
Review: Grace Notes was gracefully written and an interesting tender story. It was a delightful read and I highly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: An appreciation by the American editor
Review: Grace Notes will be of particular interest and delight to readers who, like me, like to ponder the mysteries of music -- how it is created and how it has its effect on its listeners. I found editing this book to be great fun in part because I played CDs of some of the music that serves as touchstones in it -- in particular a piano quintet by Faure and some haunting piano compositions by Janacek. I spnet a lot of time and mental energy grappling with Thomas Mann's DOCTOR FAUSTUS in college, another novel that deals, on a much larger scale of course, with a composer; GRACE NOTES is the only other work of fiction I've encountered since then that goes as deep into the subject. And if you like this book, do look into Bernard's pervious novels, CAL and LAMB, both heartbreakingly bleak and beautiful and both available in paperback from W. W. Norton.
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