Body & Soul

A Novel

Frank Conroy

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9780547729015
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This saga of a son of the working class who grows into a piano prodigy is "hypnotically readable...The best story I know of in a long, long time" ( Vanity Fair ). As a boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy. Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price—the work is relentless, the teachers exacting—but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy's own unmistakable and true voice. Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff—an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• PART ONE
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• PART TWO
• 14
• 15
• 16
• PART THREE
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• Author’s Note