Aja Gabel. (2018). The Ensemble: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Aja Gabel. 2018. The Ensemble: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Aja Gabel, The Ensemble: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2018.

Aja Gabel. The Ensemble: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2018.

OverDrive Product Record

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17. • value: cello
18. • value: mothers day books
19. • value: mothers day gifts
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29. • value: best gifts for wife
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The Ensemble

fullDescription

"Pitch-perfect." —People
"You won’t be able to quit these characters." —goop
The addictive novel about four young friends navigating the cutthroat world of classical music and their complex relationships with each other, as ambition, passion, and love intertwine over the course of their lives.
Jana. Brit. Daniel. Henry. They would never have been friends if they hadn't needed each other. They would never have found each other except for the art which drew them together. They would never have become family without their love for the music, for each other.
Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; on the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest and an angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness Quartet. After the group's youthful, rocky start, they experience devastating failure and wild success, heartbreak and marriage, triumph and loss, betrayal and enduring loyalty. They are always tied to each other - by career, by the intensity of their art, by the secrets they carry, by choosing each other over and over again.
Following these four unforgettable characters, Aja Gabel's debut novel gives a riveting look into the high-stakes, cutthroat world of musicians, and of lives made in concert. The story of Brit and Henry and Daniel and Jana, The Ensemble is a heart-skipping portrait of ambition, friendship, and the tenderness of youth.

reviews

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     Starred review from March 12, 2018
     Gabel’s wonderful debut centers on the talented members of the Van Ness String Quartet over the course of the 18 event-filled years following 1994. There’s Jana, violin 1, the natural leader; Henry, viola, the prodigy; Daniel, cello, the charming one who brings intensity to the group; and Brit, violin 2, the unknown quantity. They’ve slept with one another (Jana and Henry, Daniel and Brit) and are battered and bruised by the competition circuit. But, over the years, they stay together in the face of professional temptations (Henry is encouraged to make a solo recital debut), dueling egos (Jana incurs Henry’s jealousy when she sleeps with another violinist), rivalries (Daniel is intimidated by the members of a younger quartet), injuries, and bad judgment. Along the way, they also manage to become husbands, wives, and parents. But despite all these distractions, the love of making music is what keeps Jana and the others imperfectly bound to one another. Seldom has a novel managed to better dramatize the particular pressures that make up the life of a professional musician, from the physical pain of contorting limbs over a long period of time to the emotional stress of constantly making adjustments to the changing temperaments of partners. Readers will come away with a renewed appreciation for things people usually take for granted when listening to music. The four characters are individually memorable, but as a quartet they’re unforgettable.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
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     March 15, 2018
     Eighteen years in the musical careers and emotional lives of the members of a string quartet."Jana and Henry met at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where they'd both been excellent soloists....She'd once witnessed him sight-read Stravinsky on violin while nearly blind drunk, and play it more flawlessly and beautifully than she ever could on a first go." Then Jana and Henry meet Brit and Daniel, and the Van Ness Quartet is born. Gabel's debut opens on the eve of the group's competition for a career-making fellowship in the Canadian Rockies. In a desperate bid to ensure their success, Jana, a girl with an alcoholic mother and a rough upbringing, sleeps with one of the judges. Rotating among the perspectives of the four musicians--Jana, the driven; Henry, the prodigy; Daniel and Brit, the on-again, off-again lovers--we follow the group as they mature as musicians and adults. Not much ever happens, but what little does is analyzed in microscopic detail, via page after page of exposition. For example, Brit and Jana share a comforting embrace. "It occurred to Jana perhaps for the first time why men loved Brit--why people loved Brit: she was able, in a way that most people weren't, to give and receive goodwill. In Jana's whole life, she could not recall ever having been hugged like this. This one was all-encompassing compassion. Brit was an equal planet to Jana, and the two of them were temporarily merging, gravities combining." So much effort to make this unimportant moment important, and to so little effect! On and on it goes--sometimes it feels as if one is reading the author's notes for the book rather than the book itself.An accomplished rendering of the competitive world of classical music helps balance the less-elegant handling of the characters' emotional lives.

     COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
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     Starred review from May 1, 2018
     Michael Tilson, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, calls the great symphonies architectures of time encapsulating the insights of a lifetime; they are astonishing works that span anger and pure joy. This description also applies to former cellist Gabel's stunningly resonant debut performance. Her novel runs the gamut of human emotions, from envy to sorrow, joy, pain, terror, and frustration, as it follows the lives of the talented musicians, Jana, Brit, Daniel, and Henry, in a string quartet, the Van Ness. With remarkable assurance, Gabel takes the four through their shaky early performances and expertly ties their individual and collective lives together with generous doses of empathy. The singular motif that rises above all else is the encroachment of time, the ways in which we are forced to fine tune our lives to a pitch we can make peace with. Time looked different when you were young, and whatever foolishness you engaged in was undiluted?there was always the possibility that the next promised moment would carry you somewhere else, always the possibility of more flames, more beats, more life. Time, when you were older, was something different, irregular. A virtuoso performance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from March 1, 2018
     

     It's the 1990s, and four up-and-coming musicians at a San Francisco conservatory decide to forgo solo careers in favor of forming a string quartet. For Jana, the driven and motivated first violin, it's the realization that she's always been most engaged and creatively challenged when playing with others. Henry, a childhood viola prodigy, is compelled by his loyalty and deep friendship with Jana. Brit, the sweet and sympathetic second violin, feels like she wasted her time attending a "regular college" instead of a music school. The cellist, Daniel, nearly 30, has been toiling laboriously, waiting for the stars to align. Gabel's first novel explores the ups and downs of their chamber group, the Van Ness Quartet, as their relationships and talents grow and mature. Each character is fully developed, each action and emotion is believable and relatable. VERDICT Like a talented, well-rehearsed quartet, this is the epitome of gestalt and lyricism. Gabel explores friendship and art with great warmth, humanity, and wisdom. Each of the four parts begins with a selection of chamber music pieces that make a wonderful and fitting aural backdrop. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/17; "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/1/18.]--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

     Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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"Pitch-perfect." —People
"You won’t be able to quit these characters." —goop
The addictive novel about four young friends navigating the cutthroat world of classical music and their complex relationships with each other, as ambition, passion, and love intertwine over the course of their lives.
Jana. Brit. Daniel. Henry. They would never have been friends if they hadn't needed each other. They would never have found each other except for the art which drew them together. They would never have become family without their love for the music, for each other.
Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; on the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest and an angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness Quartet. After the group's youthful, rocky start, they experience devastating...

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