Sonata in Wax

Writer and composer Hamlin (Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories) unspools an intriguing epic about a mysterious century-old sonata. In 2018 Chicago, 54-year-old Ben Weil, creative director of a music studio, receives in the mail five blue wax cylinders of an unknown sonata played for the wealthy Oren Sanborn and his family in 1917 in Winchester, Mass. The sender, antiques dealer Willa Blount, hopes Ben might identify the performer, known only as J. Garnier, and the composer. Ben is enraptured by the avant-garde performance, which was ahead of its time (“The notes explode in a fusillade of sparks, setting everything they touch on fire”). The project also helps Ben cope with his recent divorce and the onset of a debilitating illness. He spends months transcribing the music, and is enraged and terrified when his new lover, pianist Ana Clara, believes he’s the one who wrote it and surreptitiously circulates it to composers and pianists during her European tour. Along the way, Hamlin fills in the details of Ben’s marriage and the aristocratic Sanborns in 1915 Boston, with whom Bell Company graphophone sales rep Elisabeth Garner ingratiates herself. Though the momentum tends to flag from so much backstory, Hamlin holds the reader’s attention with his impassioned depictions of Ben’s and Elisabeth’s mutual love for music. Musicologists and lay readers alike will find much to enjoy. (Apr.)