This book tells the story of the life and love of renowned virtuosa, Clara Schumann. While her life and her art are fascinating and thought provoking topics, this book does its best to take away all substance from her story. While Janice Galloway writes beautiful and poetic prose, it also smacks of Melvillian pretnesion and it is similar to eating a box of krispy kreme donuts in one setting. The glucose overload will make you want to vomit up the 423 pages back into the postmodern factory that churned out this quintessence lacking novel. This book is everything that is overrated about modern prose and has no firm foundation of substance, nothing to stand on to move the world for which Arcamedes once cried. Ms. Galloway must realize that to write about great art and great artist, one must be capable of producing art and consequently truth or at the very least encapsulating it, and with this book she proves she cannot do either.