SOURCE: "Fear of Father," in Chicago Tribune Books, April 6, 1997, p. 3.

[Below, Putnam reviews Linda Katherine Cutting's Memory Slips and Gillian Helfgott's Love You to Bits and Pieces, both memoirs of trauma in the lives of accomplished pianists. In considering Cutting's autobiographical piece, Putnam asserts that the author would have been more successful in reaching "deeper introspection" had she employed a more conventional narrative style. Putnam also praises Love You to Bits and Pieces, Gillian Helfgott's account (written with Alissa Tanskaya) of her life with piano prodigy David Helfgott and his battle to overcome "a cruelly damaging relationship with his father," finding the book "told with sensitivity, wit and great self-assurance."]

"I think of my father, how bow-legged he was, how he wore down the outside soles of his shoes. What traumatized him? The war? He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, a sergeant in Patton's Third Army...