Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman's Voice

Rating:
Summary: pathetic
Review: I cannot think of a book that is MORE BORING than this.

First we read about her spoiled childhood with voice lessons, private school, educated parents, piano lessons, etc. Then we hear her criticize her parents for being so awful to her. She whines and whines and whines until I felt nauseated. Maybe they should have beaten her with a stick instead. To top it off she goes off an becomes a voice teacher who spends all her time with her friends instead of her children (doing exactly what she criticizes her mother for doing).

There are parts of this book that are JUST PAINFUL TO READ: like when she quotes from a book she wrote as a teenager and never published as if it's an authoratative outside opinion. It's not just a short quote either: it's like 3 straight pages of a dumb childhood story. Then in every chapter there are several pages of her singing. She quotes herself thus: "Ah" and tries to describe how her singing is more or less like her true inner self. It's like trying to describe the color brown in a 35-page essay: just not that interesting. Then there's her "research" consisting of reading a journal of a woman who lived 200 years ago. The journal exerpts are also painfully boing. I can see what type of feeling the author wants us to feel, but she fails at it.

The GOOD PARTS of the book are quotes from Emily Dickenson. The BAD PARTS are everything between the Dickenson quotes.

Thank goodness I checked it out from the library instead of wasting money on this garbage.

Rating:
Summary: Better than expected
Review: I started reading this book thinking that I wouldn't enjoy it. (This book isn't what I normally read.) But I really got into this book! I wouldn't be able to put it down until I'd look at the clock and force myself to stop reading.
The author really makes you feel and understand her emotions and experiences. I would recommend this book to anyone who has no real feel for their own voice. Or even for someone who's voice has no problems being heard.

Rating:
Summary: A luminous and transforming memoir
Review: One of the most interesting things about memoirs as splendid as this one is the way they act as a looking glass for their readers. In gazing into such a book, readers often see a reflection of themselves and their lives that awakens and stimulates (as _Grace Notes_ did for me) a deeper, compassionate, and enlightened "reflection" upon themselves and on the human condition. Other readers unfortunately (such as some reviewing Hart's book on this website) see a less pleasing reflection of themselves and then project their discomfort outward, blaming the book for causing them to see (or to feel or to encounter) what they may not wish to or be ready to. Indeed, in my opinion, what seems most apparent in violently negative reviews of brilliantly wrought memoirs like _Grace Notes_ is the rocky psychological terrain of the reader-reviewers themselves; an internal emotional landscape that I have to assume is characterized by a good deal of fear, insecurity, shame, and anger. The most we can do with reviews of this "projective" kind, really, is send their writers (usually anonymous, no surprise) thoughts of lovingkindness.

In this luminous memoir we meet a woman on the verge of several passaggi--"passaggio," being a term drawn from the formal training of the voice, the place where a singer moves from one register to another--a pivotal place, a place of difficulty, challenge, and potential growth. Author Hart, in her early thirties, is at that "breaking point" where, just as a voice must learn make its passaggio, a person must learn to make his or her passage toward seemingly contradictory destinations: toward private personal truth and authenticity by making that truth manifest in the world; toward greater intimacy and connection by expanding one's sense of self and well-being to embrace others.

Part feminist rite-of-passage narrative, part spiritual autobiography, _Grace Notes_ traces the path of its author, the descendant of a General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, toward a new religious identity as a Quaker, while negotiating and supporting her husband's decision to remain with their children in the Mormon church. The story follows Hart through an assay of her childhood and youth and through an exploration of her familial relationships--particularly her relationship with her mother, a woman who like her daughter, is a professional singer and performer; who like her daughter is a ironically "victim" of "silences," struggling to free herself from that sad inheritance passed between women across generations. It is a text richly and seamlessly interwoven with literary, classical music, and religious referents, the "mentors" that Hart discovers on her journey: Zuni mythology, Jewish traditions and Cabbalistic writings, and Benedictine monastic ritual; Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Brontë, Adrienne Rich, composer Ruth Crawford, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, and a mute,19th-century ancestor named Catherine whose diary Hart discovers in a Connecticut library.


Rating:
Summary: An eloquent story of an examined life
Review: Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. This book is a memoir from a woman who has thoroughly examined her life, her passions, and her spirituality. Reading her story has reawakened my desire to make music and to become more aware of how I'm leading my own life.

Before I go further, I want to tell you that it is not a chronological memoir. I heard the author speak in a panel here in Salt Lake City, and she told us why she wrote non-chronologically: to show what memories were brought back to her at different times and how they helped her on her journey. Knowing that helped me forget about timelines and really enjoy experiencing the author's thought process as she describes her search for her voice.

Although this book is in prose, the writing reads like poetry or music, both of which are passions of the author. She sets scenes, goes backward to memories and forward to the future, and speaks in metaphor to guide us through the process that took her on her journey from a Mormon wife and mother, questioning her religion, lost and alone, with no voice (literally and figuratively) to a vibrant, questioning, alive woman who sings with a genuine voice, repairs broken relationships, and reconciles her need to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with her family's need to remain in it.

Along the way, Ms Hart provides us music nerds with all sorts of tantalizing tidbits of trivia. For extra credit, watch Cold Mountain, or at least listen to the soundtrack.

This book touched me on many levels. It'll touch you, too.

Rating:
Summary: Horribly tedious and boring.
Review: This is a waste of time. Going through all the psychological defects of a backwards girl are not that appealing to me. The plot essentially is this: anorexic, depressed young mother looks back on her life and blames others for her life. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? The author clearly needs prozac. The author clearly needs to cease writing as well.