Partita

Partita tells the story of Livia Bohusz, a middle-aged piano teacher living in a rural community in Tennessee with her quiet husband, Charlie. The story moves between the present and the past, particularly the period when Livia met Sigurd at college at the age of twenty and the present, twenty-seven years later, when Sigurd gets back in contact with her and asks to visit her in Tennessee. After more than twenty years without hearing from each other, a phone call from Sigurd reopens a history that Livia has tried hard to bury.

The novel is structured like a Bach partita, a composition divided into different parts characterised by different moods. The segments of the partita correspond to different periods of Livia’s life. The Prelude is the present, when her hoarder mother dies and Livia goes to dismantle her house; the “thrilling” Allemande tells us about the days when she first met her lost love, Sigurd; the Toccata is the day they kiss for the first time; while the “slow and sexy” Sarabande covers the period in which they fall in love. Each movement corresponds to a different temporal layer, alternating between Livia’s past in Indiana and her present in Tennessee.

Livia grows up on her family’s farm in Tennessee with her father, mother and brother. At the age of eleven, her eighteen-year-old brother, Cyrus, commits suicide. His death leaves Livia alone to face her abusive mother, who subjects her to physical beatings and verbal disparagement. Livia’s only escape is her passion for, and incredible talent at, the piano. Music becomes both her greatest passion and the means through which she can escape her social reality and her mother. Eventually, she manages to win a music scholarship to a prestigious college in Indiana, allowing her to leave home.