MacLachlan, Patricia - The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt
Sun, Sep. 19th, 2004 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterRecced and lent to me by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
double_helix, whom I duly thank, because I very much fell in love with this book.
"Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud."
It's written in extremely clear and simple language, and yet, MacLachlan manages to describe quirks of character and fleshes out how Minna sees the world in a singularly wonderful manner. Minna Pratt is eleven and searching for her vibrato. Along the way, she would like to know why fact and fiction are both truths, how to have a normal family whose mother does not write all the time, and how to better get to know Lucas, the new boy in her chamber group who does have a vibrato.
In a way, this reminded me a little of Virginia Euler Wolff's The Mozart Season, with the obvious similarities of tying not just music, but Mozart into the lives of young girls trying to figure out themselves and their lives. And I love how music is interwoven into this book -- I can't tell if it's a little remainder of being forced to take piano lessons as a kid, but the familiarity of andantes and allegros and the like comfort me.
There's something about the way this book is written that completely charms me, especially Minna's offbeat views of the world.
"Maybe we'll be fine musicians one day. But there is more.
"I will be a ferret. Your son will be a frog.
"And that is so. Tra-la."
I think that I too would like to be a ferret or a frog some day.
double_helix, whom I duly thank, because I very much fell in love with this book. "Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud."
It's written in extremely clear and simple language, and yet, MacLachlan manages to describe quirks of character and fleshes out how Minna sees the world in a singularly wonderful manner. Minna Pratt is eleven and searching for her vibrato. Along the way, she would like to know why fact and fiction are both truths, how to have a normal family whose mother does not write all the time, and how to better get to know Lucas, the new boy in her chamber group who does have a vibrato.
In a way, this reminded me a little of Virginia Euler Wolff's The Mozart Season, with the obvious similarities of tying not just music, but Mozart into the lives of young girls trying to figure out themselves and their lives. And I love how music is interwoven into this book -- I can't tell if it's a little remainder of being forced to take piano lessons as a kid, but the familiarity of andantes and allegros and the like comfort me.
There's something about the way this book is written that completely charms me, especially Minna's offbeat views of the world.
"Maybe we'll be fine musicians one day. But there is more.
"I will be a ferret. Your son will be a frog.
"And that is so. Tra-la."
I think that I too would like to be a ferret or a frog some day.
Re: Mozart Season
Mon, Sep. 20th, 2004 10:17 am (UTC)