Sunday, December 5, 2021

Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing ****

Richard Powers is a master of metaphor. The Time of Our Singing is a story about race and cultural inheritance told using the language of music. The book weaves together singing, general relativity, the Holocaust, and the struggle for civil rights into a rich symphony. It includes numerous set pieces that tie the experiences of the Strom family to larger social events and trends.

At 631 pages, The Time of Our Singing is about a third too long. Almost every chapter is impressive but overextended, and there are some that repeat the same themes.  Powers' prose is evocative but a bit too literary. For all of the richness of the story, most of the characters are thin. The most prominent example is the narrator Joseph Strom: through the first 500 pages he is a pure narrator who barely contributes to the situations he describes, with no personality of his own.

As a novel about race written by a white man, The Time of Our Singing raises some of the questions addressed in its narrative by its very existence. I found its insights about race in America convincing, but of course I am also a white man. Powers' descriptions of music are also enjoyable. My only issue with the book was how often I found myself flipping pages to see how far it was to the next chapter break.

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