Review: A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews


A Thousand Perfect Notes tells the story of a young man who is tortured and abused by his obsessive stage mother. Beck--short for Beethoven--is expected to become a famous concert pianist so that he can carry on a family legacy that was cut short after his once-famous mother suffered a stroke. Unable to play, Beck's mother relocated him from Germany to Australia where he has has spent his childhood forced to practice at the piano for hours at a time. The premise, which is slightly reminiscent in places to the Scott Hicks/Geoffrey Rush film Shine soon veers into YA romance territory when Beck meets August, a free spirited teen who may just help him play his own tune. 

This one was an entertaining read with some well, interesting characters. Beck is the epitome of a downtrodden teen who only wants to be himself, his mother is almost cartoonishly evil in places and his baby sister is surprisingly articulate for a preschooler. As for August, she was certainly quirky and pivotal to the story, she lacked depth and the character came across as underdeveloped. That said, the descriptions of the abuse Beck suffered at the hands of his mother are quite raw, particularly that ending. (Readers would have to have a heart of stone if they didn't feel anything for Beck.) There are some descriptions of cake that were quite pleasurable to read. This one was a bit average for me, but plenty of other readers have reviewed this one favourably. 

Recommended to readers looking for a short, heart wrenching YA read.

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2018

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more