Henrietta Cochran has spent nearly forty years dealing with the effects of the polio she contracted in 1945. Her braces and crutches restrict her, define her, but they also give her independence. Almost. She hates that she has become increasingly reliant on a series of live-in companions to help her. For some reason, the companions never seem to want to stay very long. So Henrietta retreats … further and further into her art, where her physical limitations don’t matter.
Into her life sails Meryn Fleming: out, outspoken, and fiercely political. She’s young, enthusiastically diving into her first job as a history professor at the local college. When she falls, almost literally, into Henrietta’s path, she seems like a godsend.
Little does Henrietta know that this young woman is about to upend her carefully structured existence. Ryn challenges everything, barging right through the walls Henrietta has built to keep others at a distance.
To Ryn, Henrietta is an enigma: prickly and easily insulted at the slightest suggestion that she can’t do things for herself; a brilliant artist capable of producing the most beautiful paintings; and sometimes, when Henrietta doesn’t realize she’s letting her guard down, a tender and sensitive woman.
With Meryn’s youthful optimism pitted against Henrietta’s jaded acceptance of the world as it is, life will never be the same for either of them.
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It is hard to put into words the wonder of this book. The depth of a relationship with limited physical aspects? My heart ache and soared as the two main characters found one another. And fought for their relationship even at one point over family. By the end one really does not know the extent of the physical relationship. That’s okay, because it seems to personal to ask of them. They loved each other deeply that is obvious. The rest is theirs.
I have read a few of the author’s books. All wonderful. Well thought out characters. Excellent story teller. Kudos to the author.
Set in Virginia in the 1980s, this is the story of a polio victim, living a sheltered and private life, until she meets a newly hired local professor. There’s plenty happening in this small town. Gossip at the country club; a male-dominated university faculty; new friendships; and politics and election campaigns. Amidst all that, love takes the stage in a most unlikely and selfless form. I love the way the polio victim’s life opened up and blossomed when she chose a new group of friends who were accepting and nonjudgmental. I enjoyed this well-written, tender and heartwarming story.
Invisible, as Music both is and is not an age gap romance. As I’m getting used to with Caren J. Werlinger’s books, it‘s different, unexpected. “Most of my books aren’t romances in the accepted sense, but they’re all love stories”, she writes in the acknowledgments page of this book.
Henrietta Cochran contracted polio when she was 15, in 1945. Almost forty years later, she still lives in the house her parents built around her needs in Bluemont, NY, needing live-in companions ever since her parents’ death. She has never allowed herself to want or need anything other than being alive. She’s involuntarily closed herself off, protecting herself from the outside world. She’s convinced no one is interested in her and others only talk about her disability, her braces and her crutches. Her life is dull and colourless, her only respite her art. Her so-called friends are the women she plays bridge with at the country club. The only person she’s vaguely close to is Bonnie, the woman who comes and clean her house, and cook for her on a weekly basis. Her companions are employees, never more.
Until she meets Ryn. At twenty-three, Meryn Fleming is a new History teacher at the local Catholic college. Despite her colleagues’ unabashed misogyny, she’s full of energy and joie de vivre. Henrietta’s coldness doesn’t fool her, nor does it scare her, and she deliberately ignores the walls she’s built around herself, bringing warmth and new friends (including young and wise nuns) into Henrietta’s life.
Invisible, as Music is a wonderful and unusual love story, and an awakening of sorts, to love and, beyond, to the world. For Ryn and Henrietta to allow their love to exist, they have to overcome more than a significant age difference and Henrietta’s health issues. The main part of the story takes place in 1983-1984. At first, the fact that the setting was the middle of the Reagan era didn’t seem to matter that much, except to establish a specific atmosphere. Then, as the 1984 presidential election came closer, the political aspect – and with it Meryn’s involvement and consequently Henrietta’s – became more and more significant. I was thirteen in 1984, and I’m French, so I don’t remember much about it, but this election marked the first time a woman was on a major party’s presidential ticket in the U.S. – Geraldine Ferraro, running as Vice President with Walter Mondale as the Democratic candidate for President.
If I had to summarize this book in a few words (or sentences, I’m not good at limiting myself, obviously), I’d say it’s about the definition of love, of what makes a relationship. It’s also about how society evolves, or doesn’t evolve, in regards to women and minorities. It’s about finding your place and acknowledging your worth. About not letting others define who you are. I don’t know if it’s a romance but it’s definitely a love story.
I never know exactly how to write about Caren J. Werlinger’s books. The best I can say about this one is that it’s quietly beautiful. Read it.
I received a copy from the author and I am voluntarily leaving a review.