Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
Denver, Colorado: Wooden Stake Press, 2014; $12.95 tpb; 256 pages
Okay, cards on the table. The author of Requiem in La Paz is a former colleague of mine, and I read an early draft of the book in manuscript. My name appears on the Acknowledgements page. So why am I reviewing a novel about which it might seem hard for me to be objective? Well, the answer is that I believe that readers of NYRSF will appreciate this small press novel and need to be introduced to it. After 40 years as a book reviewer, I think I’ve learned how to separate the personal from the professional. If I didn’t honestly like Requiem in La Paz, I wouldn’t review it, and the fact that the author is a friend doesn’t mean that I won’t point out its occasional shortcomings.
The story is in some ways as much a traditional Gothic as an urban fantasy, replete with all of the overwrought emotions and romantic vibes one expects from that genre. Set in and around La Paz, Bolivia, it concerns Isobel Linden, a former child-prodigy violinist with a highly successful recording history. Although not quite out of her teens, Isobel has turned her back on her career as a soloist and begun playing the viola in a string quartet. They’re a world-class quartet, of course, but this (particularly her taking the lesser viola position) is still a large step down in the world of classical music, especially for someone with her talent. Isabel’s reasons for both switching instruments and joining the quartet are only gradually revealed and are a significant part of the mystery driving the novel. The foursome has been invited to La Paz to do a series of performances, with the first violinist, Lucia, also making two solo appearances with Bolivia’s top orchestra.
Isobel has never had a life beyond her music; her father, a successful businessman who basically ran her career as a soloist, hadn’t allowed her to have one. Lucia, on the other hand, is a talented but highly strung glitz piece who is obsessed with both her looks and men and who knows she isn’t as good as Isobel. The other two members of the group are the handsome David, Lucia’s former lover and a “rock star” of a cellist, and Mikhail, the alcoholic second violinist, who sees himself with some bitterness as the Ringo of the group.
Isobel’s father is recently dead, which played a part in her decision to abandon her solo career. He apparently died of a heart attack, though she is quite convinced for some reason that his death was her fault and that her mysterious new viola was somehow involved as well. Her poet mother has gone mad. Apparently unhinged by her husband’s death and placed in an insane asylum, she refuses to speak to Isobel, whose voice over the phone, she insists, is not her daughter’s. Between Mikhail’s drinking, Lucia and David’s post-relationship tension, and Isobel’s own mental health issues (she’s prone to what appear to be hallucinations), the state of her musical family is hardly better than that of her biological family.
The novel opens at a formal party thrown by the somewhat overbearing American ambassador to Bolivia. It’s full of important diplomats, patrons of the arts, and other rich people. Lucia’s main concern is dragging Isobel off to meet what she calls a “godlike Norwegian archeologist,” who is one of the guests. Isobel, however, is bothered both by increasingly serious altitude sickness and a strange, vaguely musical, droning sound which seems to be coming from an ugly but very ancient statue in the ambassador’s foyer. The statue represents El Tio, the Uncle, the Bolivian version of the devil who, she discovers, is worshipped surreptitiously by the local miners and others of indigenous ancestry. Then Mikhail, drunk as usual, makes the sign of the cross in front of El Tio, somehow causing it to shatter, knocking them both to the floor. Worse still, he unjustly blames Isobel for the incident.
Besides the archeologist, Paulsen, who is actually a forensic pathologist and an expert on mummies, Isobel meets two other important characters at the party. The first is Enrique, handsome, young, a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts who was responsible for the tour invitation in the first place and who is obviously interested in Isobel for more than just her musical abilities. The second is “a man watching us from the staircase, a man with pale, tight skin and a chilling smile. Eyes like an empty grave ... and the dead thing in his hand—shriveled and gruesome and gray.” Death himself. What Gjevre has set up here is a loose retelling of Death and the Maiden, a motif originally derived from the medieval images of the Danse Macabre, later painted by various artists, including Edvard Munch, and eventually the subject of numerous stories and plays. Most famously it was translated into music by Franz Schubert in 1817. The quartet is scheduled to play the Schubert piece on their Bolivian tour.
Although Enrique provides Isobel with a much appreciated romantic interlude and seems like a genuinely decent person, his motives are suspect; like everyone else, he appears to want something inappropriate from her. Needless to say, things don’t go well for the tour, which is never completed. A gangster named Hurst assaults Isobel for reasons not discovered until later, breaking her jaw and cutting off her long hair. He is later found dead, mysteriously torn to pieces. Lucia takes seriously ill, supposedly from dehydration, after surreptitiously attempting to play Isobel’s viola, forcing Isobel, despite her own injuries, to pinch-hit on the violin solo with the orchestra.
Claiming that the entire quartet is in danger for reasons he can’t yet explain, Paulsen takes them off to his archaeological dig in the mountains where he introduces them to his mummies in situ and where things quickly go from deadly to worse. The well-handled climax, which features a Lovecraftian god from the depths, takes places deep underground in one of the dark and dangerous mines that riddle the mountainside.
One of the novel’s strengths lies in Gjevre’s adept presentation of the stresses of daily life for a touring classical performance group. The author herself is a violist and has family members who are professional string players, giving her the background to make those complex relationships believable. Her knowledge of Bolivia and its musical culture also comes from firsthand experience. She is, further, an accomplished prose stylist whose language invariably rises to the occasion, whether she’s depicting the beauty of a well-played concerto or the horror of an encounter with Death personified.
This is a first novel, however, and there are problems. Isobel, as protagonist and narrator, spends a lot of time being confused, and, although she has quite a bit of spunk (more than is humanly possible, perhaps), she is generally more acted upon than actor. When Isobel knows what’s going on, her narrative voice is frequently oblique, hinting at mysteries without fully explaining them, perhaps because she cannot bear to come to terms with the truth. More often, however, she has no idea what is happening or why and is pushed from one place or action to another by Enrique, Lucia, Paulsen, or someone (or something) else. She can be heroic, but she occasionally acts like a petulant little girl, though this may be a natural outcome of her abnormal upbringing as a child prodigy. These personality traits are all believable, and a certain amount of mystery is necessary, of course, but they add up to a narrator who doesn’t always provide adequate guidance, occasionally leaving the reader to-ing and fro-ing in the dark with little clue as to why the plot is moving in the direction it appears to be headed. Of course, a novel like this has to provide a series of mysteries, and there are a number of good ones in here—is Isobel alive, dead, or something else? Is her viola possessed and guiding the action or merely a tool and, if so, of whom? What are Enrique and Paulsen’s ulterior motives? Is El Tio actually a Bad Guy or a Good Guy? Can a girl whose body is drying up and falling apart find love with a cursed Bolivian millionaire?—this reader at least would have liked a bit more authorial guidance throughout.
Such criticisms aside, Requiem in La Paz is a rewarding and highly literate novel. The characters are worth caring about, and the musical content is invariably engaging, particularly if you’re the kind of reader who actually knows the difference between Schubert and Schumann. The mysteries, if occasionally a bit confusing, are still worthy of attention. And when Gjevre goes all Lovecrafty on you at the end of the book, you’ll think it was worth the wait.
Michael Levy has just been drafted to become Interim Chair of his department.
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