58 pages • 1 hour read
Ann-Marie MacDonaldA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section describes pedophilia.
“Everyone is dead,” the novel starts before the novel flashes back in time to explain what has happened. Using the metaphor of a photo album, the unidentified narrator introduces the setting and then each of the principal characters by capturing each in a photo. Only Kathleen is not pictured: All but one of her photos are destroyed, and Kathleen now sings in heaven.
James Piper was raised in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, by a loving mother who dreamed her son would not waste his life working in the local coal mines. She taught him to play piano and to love music. His father, a shoemaker, was abusive toward James’s mother. Because she loved the piano, one day he took a hammer to the instrument. James, determined to help his mother, taught himself how to rebuild the piano, becoming a piano tuner in the process. In 1897, when he is old enough to leave home, James heads to the island’s biggest city, Sydney, certain there were lots of pianos there.
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By Ann-Marie MacDonald
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