From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted—and divided—family, set against the backdrop of postwar America.
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Black Philadelphian studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and their better judgment—they marry.
They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the civil rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.
Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.
“The last novel where I rooted for every character, and the last to make me cry.”—Marlon James, Elle
Luisa
25/6/2022
A family story of an impossible family in the post war USA. Delia Daly a classical singer and David Strom a german phisic émigré, she colored, him jew, both music lovers, tumble upon each other on the Mall in Wahington at a historic concert. At ods they get in love, marry and have three children in NYC where David is teaching at Columbia. As their family is pulled from every possible corner, their love of music harmonizes their reunion. The 5 of them are outstanding musicians, particularly the oldest son Jonas, the owner of a one in a million voice. He and his brother Joseph, who is the narrator, receive the best classical music education available to "mixed" children. But it is also their first time out of the nest. From them on personal trait, social, political and cultural forces pushes each of the 5 Stroms into different paths that are not entirely into their making or talent. This book is about the possibilities colored people faced after the war in America and how the process steered people into fixed identities. Not only the main characters are accomplished musicians but music is the guiding force behind the argument development, reminding us of Dr. Faustus. But for Powers, in contrast with Mann, the time is for a singing not for a tragedy.