Chamber Music: Caroline Maclaren, the widow of a prominent composer, is finally going to tell her own life story. Taking pen to paper, she relives her sheltered youth, her chilly marriage to a brilliant man, and the melancholy solitude she experienced until she found loving companionship with her ill husband's caretaker, Anna. This masterful tale of passion late in life is widely considered Grumbach's finest work. The Ladies: In 1778, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby left Ireland to live together in Wales as a married couple. Well-born and highly educated, the Ladies of Llangollen-as they came to be known-defied social convention, spending half a century in a devoted relationship.
"I believe Chamber Music will be a classic. It deserves to be."
Alice Walker
"Doris Grumbach's Chamber Music has made a considerable impression on me… It is a haunting story, all the more powerful because of the elegant economy of the writing."
Barbara Pym
"It is as if Willa Cather had decided to tell the whole truth. It is Virginia Woolf without the evasive prettifying… One of those rare novels written for adults who listen."
