Coming back to his childhood home after years of absence, Ben is unprepared for the secret, which is now revealed to him: his mother, Natasha, who used to be a brilliant pianist, is losing herself to early-onset Alzheimer’s, which turns the way her mind works into a riddle. His father has remarried, and his new wife, Anita, looks remarkably similar to Natasha–only much younger. In this state of … of being isolated, being apart from love, how will Ben react when it is so tempting to resort to blame and guilt? “In our family, forgiveness is something you pray for, something you yearn to receive–but so seldom do you give it to others.”
Behind his father’s back, Ben and Anita find themselves increasingly drawn to each other. They take turns using an old tape recorder to express their most intimate thoughts, not realizing at first that their voices are being captured by him. These tapes, with his eloquent speech and her slang, reveal the story from two opposite viewpoints.
What emerges in this family is a struggle, a desperate, daring struggle to find a path out of conflicts, out of isolation, from guilt to forgiveness.
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“The White Piano– “Still Life with Memories” is a poignant study of love, longing, and desire, painted with the masterful verbal brush of artist Uvi Poznansky. Through a series of memory sketches, the story’s narrator, Ben, recounts returning home after a ten-year absence to care for an ailing father. During the first night in his old bedroom, he recalls his mother’s exquisite playing of her treasure white grand piano, playing that symbolized the familial harmony he believed existed before an unexpected divorce drove his mother away.
Ben arises the next morning to a very different reality. The grand piano is still in the old family living room but is marred and left untuned. His mother, Natasha, has been replaced by a younger look-alike named Anita who can’t carry a tune, but has an earthy, seductive appeal that clashes with Ben’s memories of his demure and sophisticated mother.
As his cantankerous father and alluring step-mother intrude into Ben’s memories, we learn that Ben’s idealized still life hasn’t been an accurate one at all – that disharmony was growing long before Ben left home, but for reasons he couldn’t have imagined. Characters who are only crudely drawn in Ben’s initial memory sketches develop much greater depth as they are colored with Poznansky’s skillful literary palette. As Ben discovers what truly separated his parents, he is aided by the uncultivated sensitivity of his mother’s replacement who serves to help bridge a deep divide that has grown between Ben and his father. In a final still life, the white piano returns to Natasha. But it is another simpler tune that begins to restore harmony to Ben’s final memory still life.
This is the fourth or fifth of Poznansky’s novels I have read. “The White Piano” maintains the literary standard of excellence I have come to expect from this talented artist. It is a beautifully crafted study of a family’s longing to reconnect. I highly recommend this ‘Still life with Memories.’
Tensions Rise As Father And Son Search For Forgiveness While Also Becoming Rivals.
This is book two of the five part Still Life with Memories series. It is a story of struggle between and father and his son. Book one, My Own Voice, is told in Anita’s point of view. This is told in Ben’s point of view, covering roughly the same period of time (minus Anita and Lenny’s backstory). The story opens about one month after Lenny’s marriage to Anita. It helps to have first read book one, though this can be read as a standalone.
Ben Kaminsky left home ten years ago, at the age of seventeen. His parents’ marriage was imploding and the pain of living under the same roof would have killed him had he not packed a bag and headed from his California home to Europe. With his parents’ support he spent time in Firenze, Rome, and Tel Aviv. He had attended medical school for two years but dropped out, drifting aimlessly instead. He had never had a job in his decade abroad, and was fearful his family might discover his bumbling ways.
His parents, Lenny and Natasha, had fought about his father’s infidelity before Ben left home. His mother had been unable to forgive the single indiscretion and a divorce followed. The young girl that had been the source of the indiscretion – Anita, who had only been sixteen at the time – promptly moved in with his father, Ben learned from his gossiping aunts. Ten years later, his father had finally married Anita. That event had not gone off smoothly, however, because his father had been hospitalized due to an injury at the wedding, resulting in calls for Ben to return home.
One month later Ben, now twenty-seven, finds himself back in his childhood home. His father is now in his fifties, and though as handsome as ever, he is for now physically diminished as a result of his injury. Anita’s presence in the home causes all kinds of issues. To begin, she looks like a younger version of Ben’s mother, Natasha. She is beautiful and provocative. And she is a year younger than Ben. The youth that Ben and Anita share makes for an odd and uncomfortable living situation. But that just adds to the tension between Ben and his father. Ben returns home with the same hurts that sent him packing ten years ago. He is still damaged and emotional. His father, a would-be writer, is poor with words and struggles to explain what happened between him and Natasha to Ben’s satisfaction.
The distance between Ben and his parents had become more than just geography over the years. Ben has been isolated in many ways. He soon learns that his mother had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at age forty-six, four years after Ben left home. Ben is furious for having been kept in the dark. As if that were not enough, Anita lets out the news that she is expecting a baby. Ben struggles with his place in the world. He hopes to connect with his mother. He lays blame at his father’s feet for destroying their family, while he hopes desperately to feel accepted and loved by a father who has moved on and begun a new family in his absence. Ben is not happy with his father’s young wife, yet Anita’s presence tempts him, particularly as he observes that his father does not love her as he perhaps ought to. The atmosphere becomes tense as father and son veer towards becoming rivals.
Ben’s story is painful look into how families are impacted by infidelity, divorce, Alzheimer’s, and secrets. It is about the desperate need for forgiveness that drives the human heart. He leaves home as a hurt and confused teenager and returns home as a man unable to move forward in life and in need of answers. Lenny, Ben, and Anita each share blame in this story, but each is human and imperfect. It is in understanding where they come from, what their thoughts are, and where they go that the full tragedy is revealed. Here Ben’s point of view lends another perspective to this sad story. Ben finally earns a little closure in the end.
There is one issue that merits mention. There are two points in which the story skips ahead, but important bits have been left out, causing some confusion. For anyone hoping for a better explanation of the events, some details are found in Anita’s story, book one. To better explain what happens between chapters seventeen and eighteen in this book, reference the beginning of chapter thirteen and the tail end of chapter fifteen in My Own Voice. For anyone that wants to see more of Ben’s story, chapter sixteen of My Own Voice picks up after this book closes and gives a small peak into the near future from Anita’s perspective. This story serves a similar purpose, filling in a few unexplained gaps in the latter part of My Own Voice as well. Note that although there remain three more books in the series, they are Lenny and Natasha’s story – a look at the past. Chapter sixteen of My Own Voice is chronologically the furthest the collective story goes.
Ben struggles when he returns home to find his mother has Alzheimer’s and his father is newly remarried. Tensions rise as father and son search for forgiveness while also becoming rivals. The story is well-written. The plot is complex but obscure and very slow to roll out. The characters are carefully crafted. The story is written in first person from Ben’s POV. I rate this book four stars.