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Time of Our Singing

By Richard Powers

(4)

| Paperback | 9780099453833

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Book Description

A magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted -- and divided -- family, set against the backdrop of postwar America

On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Continue

A magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted -- and divided -- family, set against the backdrop of postwar America

On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and--against all odds and better judgment--they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. But their three children must survive America's brutal here and now. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up during the Civil Rights era, come of age in the violent 1960s, and live out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, "whose voice could make heads of state repent," follows a life in his parents' beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, chooses a militant activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generational tale, struggles to remain connected to them both.

The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.

Critics

  • Face the music

    The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers 631pp, Heinemann, £14.99 There is no other contemporary American writer quite like Richard Powers. He is, as Sir Cliff Richard once said of Elvis, "a phenomena". The Time of Our Singing is his eighth novel si ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • The voice of America

    The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers (Vintage, £7.99) My, they don't give up, do they, those people trying to write the Great American Novel. If you thought Don DeLillo's Underworld nailed it, this latest slab, about 300,000 words of it, may ma ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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Book Details

  • Rating:
    (4)
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  • English Books
  • Paperback 640 Pages
  • Edition: New Ed
  • ISBN-10: 0099453835
  • ISBN-13: 9780099453833
  • Publisher: Vintage
  • Pub date: Feb 05, 2004
  • Dimensions: 1226 mm x 839 mm x 258 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Hardcover
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9780099453833 Paperback $14.47 $11.07 The Book Depository
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