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A breathtakingly radiant story of an unlikely childhood friendship that survives the test of time.
Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. The novel follows Gustav's family, tracing the roots of his mother's anti-Semitism and its impact on her son and his beloved friend.
Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and forward through the lives and careers of the two men, one who becomes a hotel owner, the other a concert pianist, The Gustav Sonata explores the passionate love of childhood friendship as it is lost, transformed, and regained over a lifetime. It is a powerful and deeply moving addition to the beloved oeuvre of one of our greatest contemporary novelists.
Rose Tremain is a tremendous writer and her literary powers are displayed to great effect in this novel. She is a master at leaving gaps for the reader to fill in and really feel what is happening. Although I enjoyed the conclusion to the story of Gustav and his friend Anton, I felt that there were not enough scenes of them together, particularly in the section when they are adults, to provide the emotional punch Tremain was aiming for...continued
Full Review
(505 words)
(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
In The Gustav Sonata, Gustav and Anton share a love of the German children's book, Struwwelpeter, which was written by Dr Heinrich Hoffmann in 1844. NPR noted that Struwwelpeter "set the stage for children's book classics like Where the Wild Things Are and the beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
There have been countless editions of this collection of frightening and cautionary stories, delivered in jaunty rhyming couplets, and it has been translated into 35 languages. Most striking are the drawings — the famous children's book author Maurice Sendak called Struwwelpeter "graphically, one of the most beautiful books in the world." English readers may be more familiar with the translated name for Struwwelpeter, ...
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