Nancy Moser - "Mozart's Sister"

     I love the sense of accomplishment that accompanies the finishing of yet another book!  It's such a great feeling to add another work to the continually growing "already read" stack of books.  Can anyone relate, or am I just that big a bookworm?

Mozart's Sister

     I just finished "Mozart's Sister," an historical fiction by Nancy Moser.  I've not read anything else she's done, and am not really tempted to.  Is it wrong of me to not give her a second chance?  I love Mozart, and have since I was a child.  His music is beautiful and inspiring, and his life story is interesting and tragic.  I even got to visit his childhood home in Salzburg, Austria.  I was hooked.  Oh yeah, and he had a sister.......

     Thus the premise of the aforementioned novel.  I knew he had a sister, but never knew much about her.  She was six years, his senior, and just as talented as Wolfgang, but was overlooked due to her sex.  Simply because she was a female, she was not really even given a chance at notoriety (outside of her childhood performances with Wolfgang), or even an opportunity to do much composing.  It was an intriguing (and depressing) look into 18th century life.  I had not really realized how utterly dependent women were made to be upon men.  

     I like the idea of the book, but not so much the presentation.  I can't really put my finger on why I didn't really enjoy this book as much as I expected to, but I'll give it a shot.  It is rare that I start a book, and have to really push through it by force of will to get to the end, but this took a little work.  The information it contained both about the time period, and about the Mozart family piqued my interest, but I found her writing style to be a little bland.  Generally I really enjoy reading stories written in the first person, but I found this one to be dull.  It was a little "whiney" and riddled with "daddy loves you more" sibling rivalry syndrome.  I understand that is what it was probably like, but it just got old after the first few chapters.  The last few chapters of the book about her later life were intriguing, but I understand not much information is available about that period of her life.  The Mozart family wrote and saved much of their correspondence to one another, and Ms. Moser used those as part of the research for the book, but most of those letters were written during her childhood and young adult years. 

    

     Reading this novel makes me appreciate indoor plumbing, and antibiotics all the more.  I am also grateful that for me, in this country, at the time in which I live, opportunities are so much more available to me as a woman.  Maybe one day I'll have made my way through the ever-growing stack of  "to be read" books and find myself reading another Nancy Moser novel.  I'll let you know!

For now, just keep your nose in a book.