At Long Last, Another Book Finished

In my women's book club, we will often bring books we are finished reading to loan out, and two months ago, Jan leant me Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay. She said it was about Clara and Robert Schumann along with Johannes Brahms, and about the mysterious relationship between Clara and Brahms. As a music historian in my past life, I was interested to read this novel.

It's a quick read. I got a big chunk of it read on the ferry from Catalina to Long Beach on Saturday.

Ansay sets up parallel relationships between her protagonist, a woman who is writing a novel about Clara, and Clara, herself. I had known very little about the Clara/Johannes story, so reading quotations from their correspondence and diaries was interesting. The theme of the novel, can men and women be true friends (think When Harry Met Sally), seemed a little contrived to me, but it turns out that Ansay drew quite a bit from her own recent life for this book which you can read about here.