September 1, 2022
First-time author and MacArthur Fellow Denk immerses the listener in music throughout this memoir and love story to music. He narrates his own story quite well, bringing the amateur musician and music aficionado in on many of the secrets that composers and musicians use to paint pictures, tell stories, and produce a wide range of emotions. As a precocious six-year-old, Denk began his musical training with a string of teachers, each with their own take on theory and performance. They each shaped his musical abilities, teaching him much about music and life. Denk pulls listeners into vivid imagery and classical and romantic music's plethora of great composers. The listener feels like they and the artist are sipping tea as he tells of his life's journey. What makes the audio version the best way to consume this story is Denk's piano passages, which well demonstrate his points. For listeners who've ever abandoned a musical instrument, Denk will make them want to dig it out again. VERDICT Listeners will fall in love with music even more or all over again.--Laura Trombley
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from November 29, 2021
A boy tumbles into manhood while learning classical piano in this raucous coming-of-age memoir from concert pianist and New Yorker writer Denk. He surveys his youth through the lens of his piano studies—from his first plinkings in 1976 at age six with a neighborhood teacher in New Jersey to his rigorous studies at Juilliard’s PhD program—while navigating complicated family relationships and his awakening homosexuality. It’s a story of mind-numbing practice; obsessive attention to fingering, tempos, and tone; and wan hopes of glory, all made engrossing by Denk’s shrewd metaphors (“Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address”). At its heart are evocative sketches of Denk’s teachers and their lessons—which can feel like philosophy seminars (“You need to learn the difference between character and caricature,” one instructor says) or barroom brawls (“ ‘Why are you fucking waiting?’ he yelled in my face, coating me with a fine film of scotch-scented saliva”)—but always unveil some deep musical truth. Denk’s sparkling prose, frankness, and humor make for an indelible portrait of the musician as a bewildered kid.