Book Review

Lioness in Blue by Shira Glassman

While reading this short story, I vacillated wildly between appreciation for the lyrical and elegant descriptions of playing music, and bafflement at the overabundance of exclamation points and awkward and unrealistic dialogue.

Lauren Stern is second oboe in an orchestra, and she has a thing for first oboe, Dan Cohen, who is much older than she is. They’ve been playing together for awhile and are friends, having bonded over the experience of being two lone Jewish musicians in the orchestra’s Christmas concert. When they’re together for a weekend at a concert rehearsal, she decides to make a move to find out if the attraction is mutual.

What I liked: writing about music, especially playing music, is difficult. Using words to describe what you’re doing and what you’re hearing is not no easy feat. The small sections wherein Lauren explained how practicing made her feel, and how much she loved playing in an orchestra and being part of one sound created by dozens of individuals were beautiful. I highlighted and re-read the description of a duet she and Dan play during Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra:

The second movement…was a series of duets for various winds and brass, starting with two bassoons, then the two of them — unaccompanied except for string flourishes, and completely exposed. The two oboes had to move together, two notes apart, blended as if they were a single voice. They must grow louder and softer together, articulating identically, before yielding the pattern to the pair of clarinets behind them.

Within the short length of this story, I understood how music and performance are an inextricable part of Lauren’s life and worldview, and how her understanding of intimacy is not just sexual and emotional, but musical as well.

I also appreciated Lauren’s very candid, confident, and relaxed acceptance of her bisexuality and her desire for Dan. The book description mentions comments from other people as a potential conflict, but there aren’t long or awkward scenes or conversations about her relationship with Dan, or her past relationships with women. Lauren knows that her attraction to Dan will attract commentary from her friends and acquaintances in the orchestra, but she’s pretty unconcerned about it. Any conversations that mention Dan in a way she doesn’t like are dismissed with a shrug. That ended up being both a credit to her confidence and acceptance of herself, and a bit of a detriment, because there’s otherwise very little tension in this story at all. The tension is mostly, “Does Dan feel attraction to her? Will they get together?” Those questions are answered very early on, and by the end – this is a very short story with a timeline of one weekend – they aren’t necessarily a couple, but they aren’t single, either.

And then there’s the dialogue and language choices, and this is where I really struggled. Some of the passages I highlighted:

Checking herself in the mirror…Lauren was pleased with what she saw: a twenty-five year old brunette with a distinctive nose, a fit kind of chunky poured luxuriously into her dark green blouse and long skirt, with lush womanly curves.

“A fit kind of chunky?” What?

“This food is awesome. My mouth keeps doing cartwheels! Mmm!”

Dan beamed. “I’m glad they didn’t let me down!”

There aren’t many people in the restaurant with them, and that’s probably a good thing with all that exclaiming going on. So many exclamation points in the dialogue. SO MANY.

“I know how much it means to those kids in the ensemble when people comment on the videos I post.”

“You’re really diligent about getting those up,” said Dan. “I’ve noticed! I show them to my students sometimes.”

“Aww, thanks! Yeah, I guess I keep hoping that I’ll hit it just right and one of them will get, like, millions of views.”

This passage illustrates another thing that irritated me: Lauren, in addition to performing, also volunteers with a small ensemble of at-risk youth. Repeatedly, when Lauren is discussing their progress, the videos she posts on YouTube of their performances, and the struggle to find funding to continue her volunteering, she refers to them as “those kids.” It bugged the hell out of me. There wasn’t room for them in the story for them to have names and identities or even a reference to which instruments, I suppose, but her constant references to her group of students as “those kids” or “those kids in the ensemble” felt callous, distant, and condescending, and it ticked me off.

There were other word choices that pulled me out of the story, such as Dan’s fluffing his hair, his “fuzzy” beard, and his “furry chest hair.” The wording and the overabundance of exclamation points in the dialogue detracted from the parts I did enjoy, such as the descriptions of playing music together. Dan and Lauren are both music nerds who will happily deep-dive in to the history and experience of the instruments they play, and I wish there had been more about their attachment to music, and the way their experience playing together in the orchestra had developed their friendship. Basically I wanted more of the music and fewer exclamation points, odd word choices, and awkward, wooden dialogue.

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Lioness in Blue by Shira Glassman

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