Kingsolver's new novel Partita explores art's place in an ordinary life

American novelist Barbara Kingsolver, known for Demon Copperhead, has released a new novel, Partita, centered on the role art plays in a person's life and the tension between pursuing greatness and finding fulfillment in an ordinary existence.

The story follows Livia, a school music teacher in rural Tennessee, the same area where she grew up and where she is now married to a farmer. Her settled middle-aged life is disrupted by a phone call from Sigurd, a man with whom she had an intense and destructive affair during her college years. The call pulls her back into memories of her brother's suicide when she was 11, and of the years she spent on a music scholarship in Indiana, once believing she was destined to become a world-class pianist. Those dreams were destroyed by an accident that injured her hand, an incident in which Sigurd played a part.

Two visions of art and love

The novel contrasts two timeframes and two outlooks: the 20-year-old Livia would have considered her current, quieter life a failure, yet the older Livia has found contentment as a local, inspiring music teacher. A review notes that the writing style turns markedly overwrought in passages describing Livia and Sigurd's affair, in contrast to the more restrained, precise language used when Livia reflects on music itself — the one constant that has carried her into middle age, even as passion has faded.

Kingsolver, who herself attended college on a classical piano scholarship, is described as clearly fascinated by music and how to write about it, showing how a piece of music can enrich both performer and audience even when the performance itself is far from masterful. As a committed social novelist who has even established a prize for socially engaged fiction, Kingsolver uses Partita to argue for the necessity of art within ordinary communities, and for ordinariness within art.

The review concludes that Partita lacks the immediate pull of Demon Copperhead and takes longer to draw readers in, but is nonetheless a rich novel that continues to provoke reflection on what is gained through the compromises of middle age.