Middle C, published in 2013, is a hugely entertaining book by a writer I greatly admire for his verbal dexterity and broad, ironic humor. The novel is a sort of bio-piece about a family, that starts out shortly before WWII in Austria and fakes Jewish ethnicity in order to be able to migrate to England. The father of the family continues his shape shifting and eventually disappears, supposedly to America, after the war. The mother and son follow sometime thereafter, although with no contact from the disappeared father, ending up in small-town Ohio. The story centers on the life of the son, Joey Skizzen, whose childhood and adolescence we trace, and who eventually becomes a professor of music by means of his own version of his father's reinvention strategy. He also ends up to be a great pessimist and, well, fake. The story is told with wonderful humor and vividly inventive language that often had me laughing out loud. Gass is an extremely gifted and meticulous writer, with a great verbal fluency and a wonderful gift for producing the perfect turn of phrase.
For a review of the book by The Telegraph, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10146231/Middle-C-by-William-H-Gass-review.html
For a review of the book by The Telegraph, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10146231/Middle-C-by-William-H-Gass-review.html
