Book review by Laura Ford, Reference Librarian

Did you ever wonder what happens to child prodigies when they grow up? Most, like the famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, begin performing in public at an age when their contemporaries are playing in the sandbox. Ma continued to adulthood as an internationally renowned performer and ambassador from the world of classical music. Yo Yo Ma has gained such a degree of fame that he needed no introduction when he was dropped into Mark Salzman's The Soloist for a cameo role.

On the other hand, the main character in The Soloist, Renne Sundheimer, lost his prodigal ability when he was a teenager. The book opens with him in his mid-thirties, living alone, a nondescript university music instructor, with no close relationships. He keeps the world at bay, waiting for the day his continuous and rigorous practicing will reward him with re-entry into the life he had as a concert cellist. As Renne says early on in the narrative: “I'm young for a retired concert cellist, but old for a virgin.”

Over the course of a summer, two unwelcome intrusions drag him out of his holding pattern and force him to closely examine the world and his place in it. The first is a summons to jury duty on a murder trial. The second is a request to mentor and teach a completely unappealing, but brilliantly gifted young cellist. We can't say these intrusions force our hero out of his comfortable shell and out into the world, because quite frankly he isn't at all comfortable in his shell. Still, Renne tries awkwardly and uncomfortably to extricate himself from both of these obligations. Luckily for him, (and for us) he fails.

In essence, The Soloist is a coming-of-age story for a 36-year-old man. His experiences as child prodigy and concert cellist had served to completely isolate him, and even though he technically didn't qualify as either any more, he had maintained the isolation. Jury duty forces him to not only rub shoulders with people outside his carefully crafted atmosphere, but to examine closely and ponder the thoughts and actions of both his fellow jurors and the defendant.

While on jury duty he takes up with a woman his mother would disapprove of, a woman he disapproves of himself. It is perhaps only because he sees her as not worthy of his previous prodigal self that he is able to unbutton himself enough to get to know her. This was the first crack in his shell.

The second was when Renne ultimately realized that he had to devote himself to Kyung-hee's education as a service to himself and to music, not as something to fill the time until he regained the stage himself. In essence, Renne only ceased to be a concert cellist when he mentally and emotionally COMPLETELY committed himself to teaching his new protégé.

This decision is what enabled him to finally move on, to walk out of the shady world of what was and into the sun and fresh air of what is, and what might be. Into the rest of his life.

Try The Soloist and see how Renne was able to bring his attention to what was in front of him rather than what lay behind.

For more information about this program, call the library at 781-934-2721 x125.

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