"Sonata in Wax" by Edward Hamlin

Your cup will run over when you read Edward Hamlin’s thrilling Sonata in Wax. The author supplies two enthralling narratives which are linked by five frail pieces: Bell Graphophone wax cylinders of a sonata recorded in Massachusetts during the First World War. Both threads contain the dark stain of perfidy: the archaic story arc takes much of its color from the “Kaiser’s War,” which turned Europe into a charnel house; the more recent narrative features the more personal savagery of a revenge-minded  piano-playing diva whose gargantuan ego has been injured. This novel will sweep you up in its hundred-year timeframe, make you marvel at Hamlin’s deft balancing act as the two head to their dénouements. It’s a beautiful book.

The present-day narrative starts with world-renowned recording engineer, Ben Weil (our hero), receiving five wax recording cylinders, recorded 100 years prior at a private piano recital in Boston. An antiquarian from Maine has shipped them to Ben at his Chicago studio with the request that he identify the artist/composer if he can, and please report back to her. Ben immediately becomes intrigued, and he somehow fits his research into his already crazy-hectic schedule.  

The story from one hundred years earlier deals with Elisabeth Garnier, a pretty young Frenchwoman, who works for Alexander Graham Bell, presenting the company’s wares to Boston’s Brahmin elite. Her father Jaques is the virtuoso piano player who has composed the marvel of a sonata. Ben’s research turns up a few tidbits of arcana, but through a misunderstanding arising at a point when Ben is ill and vulnerable, Ana Clara Matta, Brazil’s prima piano virtuoso finds his attempt at scoring the piece and thinks it’s his own composition. The ‘2018 Chicago’ narrative consists of Ben trying in vain to contain the lie that’s not entirely his fault. In his insular world, in which he is a widely respected and sought-after world class professional, the exposure will sink his reputation and end his career in disgrace.

As a layman music lover, I am thrilled at Hamlin’s descriptions of not only lovely passages of music, but also his knowing touch with the subtle flourishes and emphases world-class players add to make them their very own. It is these touches of genius in the rarified air of the very best that make virtuosos rich and famous. He is equally strong when capturing the zeitgeist of World War I Boston; the war plows an entire generation of French men into their graves, and this horror is followed up by another equally ghastly scourge, the 1918 flu pandemic.

Hamlin alternates his timelines expertly, unfolding his two plots to build a terrific tension. His two protagonists are vivid, honestly drawn, and very sympathetic. His secondary characters are fully nuanced, and even his portrayal of historical characters rings true. The clever construction and unerring imagining of characters is the true draw here. This novel builds tension, ties several generations of a prominent American family together, celebrates brilliant music and its equally brilliant performance, and leaves the reader in awe. This is Hamlin’s first foray into full-length fiction; he already won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize in 2015. Take up this lively and imaginative work, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.