Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: If you were first introduced to Percival Everett through James, as I was, you know that he uses code-switching as a narrative technique with devastating precision, and won't be disappointed to see him displaying his mastery in Serious Music, and with even more precision and dark humor.
Arthur Champion is a violin student at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1918 when he finds himself the target of a professor's racist agenda. At the "suggestion" of the administration, he and a friend enlist in the army, where they soon find themselves a part of General Pershing's personal string quartet, which does nothing to prevent them from being gassed at the Battle of the Somme. Throughout his travails, Arthur relies on music, playing it, composing it, and thinking about it, to keep him sane, but it isn't until he is asked to play the piano accompaniment to a showing of Birth of a Nation that he starts to realize the power of music to shape the experience of his listeners.
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.
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