Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Feb 2009
304 pages
Genre: Novels
Publication Information
The Music Teacher is a penetrating and richly entertaining look into the heart and mind of a woman who has failed both as an artist and as a wife.
Barbara Hall, award-winning writer and producer of such hit television series as Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia, tells the story of a violinist who has accepted the limitations of her talent and looks for the casual satisfaction of trying to instill her passion for music in others. She gets more than she bargains for, however, when a young girl named Hallie enters her life. For here at last is the real thing: someone with the talent and potential to be truly great.
In her drive to shape this young girl into the artist the teacher could never be, she makes one terrible mistake. As a result she is forced to reevaluate her whole life and come to terms with her future.
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"The Music Teacher does to, and with, music teachers what Nick Hornby's High Fidelity does to, and with, record store geeks. What a smart alecky, unputdownable, brutally honest, heartbreaking glory of a book." - Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonists Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.
"This keenly observed and piercing character study of a complex, haunted woman grappling with the disappointments in her life and reevaluating her own ambitions should resonate with readers long after the final page is turned." - Booklist.
"[A] deeply felt meditation. . . .[Hall] presents music as a glorious metaphor for an approach to life." Kirkus Reviews.
"Hall...doesn't shy away from the sour notes of lost dreams, failed careers and misguided intentions, and her novel, despite its heavier than necessary dose of navel-gazing, rings true because of it." - Publishers Weekly.
"Hall's portrait of these characters is full of humor and heartbreak, as their unconventional lives take unexpected turns." - Library Journal.
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In addition to Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia, Barbara Hall has written for the television series Northern Exposure, I'll Fly Away, Moonlighting, and Hill Street Blues, among others. She is also the author of eight previous novels, five of them for young adults. She lives in Los Angeles.
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