A partita is a musical composition, often for a soloist. As Livia, the protagonist of Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Partita, explains to Sigurd, as they begin an all-consuming romance, it’s “made up of a lot of parts with different paces and moods. […] The parts are all different, and the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.”
Livia is just 20 at Indiana University, far from home, on a prestigious music scholarship. Distracted by the pursuit of excellence and the perfect love, she does not yet know that her life will be a partita, one she must make whole.
The contrasting parts of Livia’s life include three romantic relationships, an extraordinary piano talent, two bodily traumas, a fraught relationship with a violent, unloving mother, several losses, unspoken truths, loyal friends, and her brother’s suicide. The grief of losing her brother stifles Livia for decades. She focuses on piano virtuosity that takes her ever further from understanding herself – that is, until she is forced home.
Named for elements of musical compositions, the chapters of Partita alternate between formative events from Livia’s adolescence and early adulthood, and the narrative present when Livia is in her mid-40s, clearing her hoarder mother’s house after...