Clara

This beautifully written novel breaks new ground for award-winner Janice Galloway. Meticulously and thoroughly researched, it recreates the life of the immensely gifted concert pianist Clara Wieck, who at 19 married the multi-talented but ill-starred Robert Schumann, pianist, composer and music critic. In just 16 years of marriage, Clara bore Schumann eight children, tirelessly encouraged him in his work, and supported him through the terrors of protracted episodes of mental illness, an affliction which culminated in his death at the age of only 46. In telling Clara's story, Galloway gives the reader the anatomy of a unique marriage and working partnership: Clara and Robert made music together and wrote a tender marriage diary. But this novel also presents the couple as individuals in their time: 19th-century Germany, which their friends Liszt, Mendelssohn, Wagner and Brahms also inhabited. Also shown are the petty rivalries, the difficult and tedious travel, the discipline and sheer hard work of the professional musician's world. The novel can also be read as a feminist interpretation of a dedicated life. Clara was raised by a wilful and tyrannical father who vested all his hopes in her and who was, predictably, violently opposed to her marriage. In a sense she was passed from one chauvinist to another, for Schumann found it difficult to cope with his wife's fame, and when self-absorbedly ill was often very cruel to her. In Galloway's version both men were skilled in the arts of emotional blackmail, and the medical experts often blamed Clara for not knowing her domestic place, despite the fact that it was her talent and organizational skill that kept the family going. This deeply moving book shows a very human Clara who nevertheless is unwavering in her devotion to her husband and family: while admiring her indomitable strength, prepare to shed tears of pity for her plight. (Kirkus UK)