SINFONIETTA BOOK CLUB
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
Join us this September in reading Rebecca Makkai’s Music for Wartime, a heralded collection of 17 short stories ranging from war-torn twentieth century to present day, all exploring the human heart and the centrality of music and art to our lives. Gather with us for a book discussion led by Ann Putnam and a live music program of works mirroring the book’s musical themes.
When: Wednesday, September 10 at 7pm
Where: King’s Books, 218 St Helens Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402
Please join the book club by filling out and submitting the form below so that we can be in touch via email.
King’s Books offers a 15% discount on Music for Wartime—open 11am-7pm daily. The book is also available online and in libraries.
The event on September 10 is offered FREE with support from Tacoma Creates and in partnership with King’s Books.
Donations are very welcome, thank you!
About rebecca makkai’s music for wartime
Rebecca Makkai’s first two novels, The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, have established her as one of the freshest and most imaginative voices in fiction. Now, the award-winning writer, whose stories have appeared in four consecutive editions of The Best American Short Stories, returns with a highly anticipated collection bearing her signature mix of intelligence, wit, and heart.
A reality show producer manipulates two contestants into falling in love, even as her own relationship falls apart. Just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a young boy has a revelation about his father’s past when a renowned Romanian violinist plays a concert in their home. When the prized elephant of a traveling circus keels over dead, the small-town minister tasked with burying its remains comes to question his own faith. In an unnamed country, a composer records the folk songs of two women from a village on the brink of destruction.
These transporting, deeply moving stories—some inspired by her own family history—amply demonstrate Makkai’s extraordinary range as a storyteller, and confirm her as a master of the short story form.
“Ricocheting from the war-torn twentieth century to the reality-show-rich present day, the stories in this impressive collection feature characters buffeted by fate—or is it mere happenstance? The death of a circus elephant shapes generations of a small town; a passing remark ruins a plotted-out life. Our sense of history is probed, too, not without humor—Bach appears in a Manhattan living room one day, a spot of comfort in one woman’s post-9/11 life. In a series of shorter pieces, the author relates nuggets of family history and legend, including a story about young women in Budapest who used greasepaint to transform themselves into old women, in order to be spared at least one of war’s ugly realities.”
—The New Yorker
