Antonietta is quite unlike Hersey's other novels. In it he attempts to bring a lifetime of listening to music into the structure of a novel. While a child in China, he had taken violin lessons from a White Russian. He continued them for a time after the family moved back to the United States. Finally he gave them up because as he says, "I am a music lover." A book club will probably have members who are also music lovers. They might compare what they hear when they play or a great piece of music is played with what Hersey's composes say they play or compose.

Mozart in the letters in his section of the book describes what he experiences when playing Antonietta with his students. Is this how a composer of his stature hears the music he plays? Did Berlioz and Stravinsky experience music as...