The Passion of Tasha Darsky

So many times I have written about how a book transports me to a different part of the world, or a different period in history. The Passion of Tasha Darsky by Yael Goldstein Love transported me in a different way -- to the world of a virtuoso musician who lives wholly in her art. So even if this hadn't been a really good story, full of romance, heartbreak, difficult family relationships, exotic travels, etc., I would have loved this book just for introducing me to the way a musician thinks about music. Here is the protagonist, violinist Tasha Darsky, as a young Harvard college student who has been asked by her revered professor to play a piece he composed:

"I couldn't say no to my demigod of a professor, I ended loving that music. I loved the way the overtly Romantic style hid something distinctively modern beneath its warm chords. I loved the periodic slips into atonality, the disenchantment these conveyed. I loved how, the deeper I sank into the piece, the clearer it became that it wasn't so much a piece written in the Romantic style as it was a piece trying to hide itself beneath that style, that the slips into atonality were the audience's chance to see through the trumped-up Romantic delusion to the real music underneath."

Tasha wants to be a composer -- creating music, she feels, is more important, more noble, than simply playing it. She falls in love with another composer, a man who she views as a genius and their love affair is as passionate as their love of music. But a misunderstood comment convinces her that theirs is a "partnership between two very unequal talents" and she returns to the violin and breaks off the relationship. From that point on, she pours all of her passion in to her violin playing, becoming what some people say is "the greatest violinist since Paganini."

This book explores the questions what does it take, and what are the costs of creating art at that level? Can one live a normal life and sustain normal relationships in the context of this kind of passion and commitment? It's a fabulous book.