Virago Modern Classics discussion

I would like to catch up on A Note In Music by Rosamond Lehmann, which the group read years ago when I wasn't part of the group.

Someone would like to read it with me?

🙋‍♀️ I have just began her The Ballad and the Source and A Note In Music is the next in line. I can pause The Ballad or read both.😃

Daniela wrote: "🙋‍♀️ I have just began her The Ballad and the Source and A Note In Music is the next in line. I can pause The Ballad or read both.😃"

No, no. Read "The Ballad and the Source". When do you think you will start with "A Note In Music"?

PS I have never done a buddy-read yet ;-) It will be my first one.

I will be ready to read A Note in Music in a few days. Let's say a week? Next Saturday? Perhaps someone else is going to join us, in this case we could change the date if is not good for them.

Daniela wrote: "I will be ready to read A Note in Music in a few days. Let's say a week? Next Saturday? Perhaps someone else is going to join us, in this case we could change the date if is not good for them."

Great, we have a date! ;-) On Saturday.

I have to work this weekend so I will be late and slow with reading, but sooner or later I will read it ;-)

How are your first impressions?

I just started last night. I really like the writing, I love Rosamond Lehmann's way of telling things. Grace already seems like a complex character. I do not want to tell you more, perhaps it would be a spoiler!

I managed to read two chapters over the weekend.

I have read only Dusty Answer by the author. I liked the message and Lehmann's wisdom, but it was a bit hard to get used to the style of narrating (if I remember it correctly). Still, I loved it.

I don't have such difficulties with the style in this book.

About the story, characters, plot - I wonder where it goes.

I can see now that there are two women who are main characters. Both seem unhappy and badly wanting some changes in their life.

I am reading the second half of the book and I am curious to see what will happen. I do not think there will be major changes in the life of the two women. I expect there will be adjustments in their life, triggered by the interactions with the Miller couple. I hope it will be for the better.

Many characters, each with their own past and issues. I am also curious how it will go.

I have finished it. I really liked the parts where she describes the country and the changing of nature with the seasons.
I will write more when you have finished it.

I finished it yesterday. It was a gripping study of human nature. I can't decide which character was the most fascinating.

[Here link to my short review.]

Here is mine.

Una nota in musica by Rosamond Lehmann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At the beginning the book shows us two women, two couples closed in their unhappiness and in a flat life. We understand that there is and can be much more underneath and we hope that something will happen to them. Despite her rough exterior, Grace has a rich inner life and her personal reflections are complex and fascinating. Nora is very busy with family life but she is lively and creative, and she tones down her utterances to ensure marital tranquility. An encounter with a man will change their lives, or rather their way of seeing things (and change him a little too). Not much, but just enough. Both couples acquire a greater awareness of themselves and their relationship. Perhaps here the romanticized part is a bit pushed, extreme: in reality they would probably have taken the shortest route, and the couples would have broken up. In the final dialogue between Gerald and Nora Gerald's words sound a bit unreal.
There are beautiful descriptions of natural environments.



View all my reviews

Yeah, I did also wonder if they would have broken up in real life. But, because the author lived in those times and I not - I believe (in this case at least) she was nearer the reality of them than I.

You have made a good point, Daniela. In the end, their life didn't change much (almost anything at all) from the perspective of someone outside. Yet, we were inside, so we know that there were changes. It is a good point - how many times we think someone isn't changing at all, that life goes the same - how little we know sometimes.