- Mass Market Paperback: 293 pages
- Publisher: Plume Books (Feb 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0452284775
- ISBN-13: 978-0452284777
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.5 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,389,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
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'A pure delight, likeable characters, an intriguing plot and lots going on. Highy rated'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Swan's Knob, North Carolina, is a town of only 2500 inhabitants with a 1950s mindset doing its best to cope with the social upheavals of the 1970s. Miss Wilma, a widowed music teacher and organist, suddenly finds her quiet and long-empty house full of people and trouble.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I loved this book from start to finish, and would never have known about it had I not spotted it in my local library's clearout sale. It's a wonderful book, several stories interlaced and also a murder to solve. The love story was great as it was between two people of the older generation, and that's quite unusual these days! I'd urge everyone to read it. I've also just finished the sequel, The Sweet Life and Lynn didn't let me down. I'm really sorry to discover that those are the only two novels she's written so far but I'm keeping a lookout for the next one.
Format:Paperback
Don't even really know why I picked this up off the shelf at my local library but I'm so glad I did! Absolutely loved it-really got involved with the characters and just wanted to keep on reading to see how things turned out! Would recommend this to anyone who likes to feel a part of the people and places they read about and I'm now waiting to read the next installment of Miss Wilma,the piano teacher in "The Sweet Life".
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Fine tuned
24 Oct 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The writing evokes such a strong sense of place, time and character. The story builds up without rush, layer by layer, befitting the slower-paced Southern atmosphere--while at the same time, the characters' sense of their lives possibly passing them by, is developed. Of course, music plays a part in this story about a piano teacher. Like anticipating a coming crescendo in an exciting new piece of music, the various layers of the story-telling come together beautifully and don't disappoint.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
blonde wigs, luv hut, and one dead squirrel
30 Mar 2004
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is a great summer read that tricks you into thinking it is more obvious than it really is. Anyone with an appreciation of southern nuance will love this book. The little details creep up on you and then you suddenly realize it is rich in subliminal character and context. It is interesting to see that the writer really taps into relationships wraped around the concept of a murder mystery. It's fun and the first scene with the dead squirrel totally cracked me up.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A sweet, quiet novel
22 Sep 2004
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Fifty-something Wilma Mabry lives an ordered life--apron donned when preparing dinner, linen closet just so, and, always, the adoption of a supremely polite, even ostensibly indifferent exterior. This brand of southern gentility and a reliance on the comforts of routine have sustained Wilma--"Miss Wilma," the piano teacher of Lynn York's title--through marriage and motherhood and fifteen years of loneliness after her husband's suicide. But the price of maintaining equanimity has been a failure to communicate fully with the people closest to her. Wilma's relationship with her daughter Sarah, in particular, has suffered for it. During the course of the novel Wilma's ability to move through life seemingly unaffected is tested by a string of dramatic events: the unexpected attentions of a suitor, the murder of one of her Mayberry-sized town's policemen, and the unannounced appearance on her front porch of Wilma's troubled daughter and granddaughter.
Although its plot revolves in part around a nasty murder and its solution, Lynn York's The Piano Teacher is a sweet, quiet novel. In it the relationships between Wilma and Sarah, and between Sarah and her husband, are explored and, while we're watching, subtly altered. The characters--particularly that of Wilma--are well drawn, and life in a small community in which non-conformity is checked by the threat of scandal is nicely evoked. The book gets off to a slow start in its initial chapter, but readers who keep with the book will be rewarded.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
Although its plot revolves in part around a nasty murder and its solution, Lynn York's The Piano Teacher is a sweet, quiet novel. In it the relationships between Wilma and Sarah, and between Sarah and her husband, are explored and, while we're watching, subtly altered. The characters--particularly that of Wilma--are well drawn, and life in a small community in which non-conformity is checked by the threat of scandal is nicely evoked. The book gets off to a slow start in its initial chapter, but readers who keep with the book will be rewarded.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
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