Barbara Kingsolver, the bestselling and universally loved author of DEMON COPPERHEAD, returns with PARTITA, a quiet, meditative portrait of a woman who has survived it all --- only to watch her haphazardly constructed life fall apart.

Livia Cable is a survivor through and through --- first, of her brother’s shocking death by suicide when she was only 11; then of the isolation of being preternaturally gifted in a small town that favors hard work and propriety over lofty ambitions and creation; and finally, of a devastating injury that put those very same lofty ambitions to bed once and for all. Now, on the day we meet her, she learns that once again she will have to choose to survive when the once-upon-a-time love of her life calls to ask if she’d be willing to meet.

Set primarily over the seven days that Livia takes to consider his request, PARTITA unfolds in a dual timeline. Present-day Livia wonders if reopening her deepest wound will mean closure or devastation, while a college-aged Livia embarks on a career as a concert pianist, only to see her aspirations upended by love, injury and the crippling pressures of rising above her socioeconomic status.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a partita is “a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods,” with pressure on the artist to make these disparate parts add up to something that feels whole. This is exactly how Kingsolver allows Livia’s story to unfold: in fully rendered refrains that combine to compose a symphony of an unforgettable woman whose quest to survive belies a bone-deep weariness originating from a lifetime of contradictions.

"Much like the complicated melodies that Livia studies and conquers, PARTITA unfolds like a symphony.... This brilliant and quietly affecting novel cements Barbara Kingsolver as one of our best chroniclers of the human condition."

Appalachia-born and -raised, Livia is first marked as different when she discovers an innate gift for music, one that surpasses that of the local church organist and even the fancy teachers a county away. Her cold and judgmental mother is quick to write off her talent, thinking her ambitions unchristian and embarrassing. Her isolation is further solidified when her beloved older brother, Cyrus, steps in front of a train one day, putting the family’s interior dysfunctions on full display for their small, gossipy town. 

Cyrus is the first wound on Livia’s heart, the first time she feels angry and abandoned by someone who truly believed in her. This grief trails her all the way to the Indiana University School of Music, which she is attending on scholarship (though her mother continues to grumble about the cost of such a frivolous decision). Livia struggles at first to pair her small-town practicality with the artistic, socially minded natures of her peers. But eventually she finds her footing, even taking up with a boyfriend who aims to marry her.

Still, the love that Livia feels for her boyfriend is nothing compared to what she feels for music. It is soon usurped not by the piano, but by a labor activist named Sigurd, who regularly passes out Marxist propaganda on her campus (and who just so happens to be the most beautiful man she has ever seen). While they get to know each other, Livia begins to let her guard down, confessing to deep hurts and shattered illusions that she has never revealed to anyone before. Propelled by this heady intimacy, the two dance between love and lust.

Livia continues to nail down complicated piece after complicated piece. Her reflections on the music she creates double as reflections on the trajectory of her life. Each note is a transformative moment, and each chord is a journey in trial and error, learning things the hard way and allowing every lesson to change her. 

How then, the reader must wonder, has Livia ended up a country piano teacher married to a spectacularly decent dairy farmer (a man who adores her and whose devotion is the lifeline she doesn’t know has been suspending her)? And what does Sigurd really want from their reunion, which could upend her life and any emotional progress she has made?

The answer unfolds slowly, both in Livia’s recollections of her past and in her contemporary struggle to dig through the wreckage of her hoarder mother’s house. This is the final “gift” in their contentious relationship, as the woman she thought she understood reveals herself through strange collections of photos and letters…but is now too dead to answer for it all.

Here, in the home where she once dodged her mother’s abuses and dreamed of a world lived on a stage, Livia discovers painful truths about her upbringing and even her brother’s suicide. But perhaps most pertinent here isn’t what she finds, but what it means for the life she has become woefully ambivalent about, the injury that cost her her career, and Sigurd’s role in it all. Digging through the rubble of her past, she reveals a deep anger and sense of betrayal when it comes to Sigurd, whom she blames not only for breaking her heart, but also for her crushed hand and some secrets yet to be revealed.

Of course, because this is a Barbara Kingsolver novel, all the musical works of Livia’s life play out against Kingsolver’s own fascinations: class barriers, social injustices, and the competing pressures of family and community. Paired against Livia’s love for music, these elements combine to bring to light the book’s true aim: to meditate, thoughtfully and earnestly, on the power of art and its accessibility to all. This leaves us --- and poor, resilient Livia --- to reckon with Kingsolver’s other trademark fascination: pushing her characters into real, often insurmountable devastation. 

The beauty of Kingsolver’s prose --- lyrical yet accessible, expertly paced and clear-eyed in its judgments --- proves a formidable companion for the catastrophes and tragedies she hurls her characters through. This creates a sinking sort of atmospheric tension that often feels inescapably sad. And that’s when Livia finds a small glimmer of hope, a kind interaction, a ladder up and out of her predicaments, but never a way to avoid them completely. It is at this collision between survival and reflection that the novel meets its heart-shattering conclusion.

Much like the complicated melodies that Livia studies and conquers, PARTITA unfolds like a symphony. Melodies heartfelt and sentimental crash against staccatos of joy and transformation, and every note --- no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential --- provides a necessary balance for the rest. This brilliant and quietly affecting novel cements Barbara Kingsolver as one of our best chroniclers of the human condition.