Reviews
The Time of Our Singing follows the musical career of one brother as told by another. It's a family drama spread over many decades from the marriage of the boy's parents (a German Jew and a black women who met while singing) and goes up to present day. I liked the premise of the story and Richard Powers has a masterful control over his prose. Unfortunately, his chosen motif, music, is drawn out as an all-encompassing metaphor for all the problems and triumphs of the characters in the book. As the story progresses, the plot strains under the imposed metaphor and the book loses its tempo and staggers to an unsatisfying end. Even with this novel's faults, Powers is a strong enough writer that I want to try at least one more of his books. I think that The Time of Our Singing was a noble experiment that just didn't work for me as a reader.