A visit with Barbara Kingsolver: We talk 'Partita,' piano, aging and Appalachia

NPR's Book of the Day

Author Barbara Kingsolver discusses her latest novel, Partita, which explores the intersection of classical music, personal identity, and Ap

Key takeaways

• Kingsolver's novel Partita is structured as a musical composition, utilizing movements like Allemande and Toccata.
• The author discusses how Dupuytren's contracture affects her ability to play piano and write via keyboard.

Main topics

• Musical structure in literature
• Appalachian identity and stereotypes

Notable quotes

Every new novel is kind of a deep dive into some whole new world of study.

Conclusion

The episode offers a poignant look at how personal history and regiona

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Barbara Kingsolver will not play piano for you. I'm Speaker 1 (0:04) not going to play for you. I'll just head that one off at the pass. Well, Speaker 2 (0:09) she will not play piano for me, and I'm your proxy here, so by extension, she's not playing for you either. I Speaker 4 (0:15) don't have anything really prepared right now because I've just been through another hand issue. More Speaker 2 (0:20) about that hand issue in a bit. But we're at her house in southwestern Virginia, in Appalachia. She tells me multiple times that it's Appalachia, not Appalachia. And in her living room, there is a piano with some of the music she's working on. She shows me her music books, and she gives me just a taste. Yeah, Speaker 1 (0:37) I'm working on this minuet. It's just, um... Speaker 1 (0:47) Yeah, that's, you know, might recognize that. The Sarabande, the Corrente, the Allemande. This is Chopin Preludes, which are, you see how worn out and tattered this book is? This is one of my most loved collections here. The Chopin Preludes are really beautiful. Here, Bach two-part inventions. This goes back to, I think I probably have had this, book since I was in middle school. I think I yeah, I remember playing an invention in a recital. It's Speaker 2 (1:25) NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today on the pod, Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of now 19 books, including The Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead. As you heard, she's loved music since she was a kid, but she has never put that love into her novels until now. Her latest is titled Partita. about a woman in Appalachia seemingly destined to become a star classical pianist until, well, it doesn't happen for her. There's a lot of King's Solver in this one. I suppose that's true of all of her books, but this one feels especially close to her life. I'll explain more after the break. Speaker 7 (2:02) We the people make a free press possible. Together we hold power to account with reporting for the public, funded by the public. It takes all of us to protect the future of public media. Make your gift now at donate.npr.org. Speaker 8 (2:21) This election season, you can streamline your news intake with Up First. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight, so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know. In short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow Up First on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (2:43) Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Partita, follows Livia. Like I said at the top, she's someone at the cusp of classical music fame. She's got the piano chops, she's got the drive, and she's got the opportunity. Until her path gets derailed. It's a love letter to a type of music that Barbara Kingsolver has loved all her life. So why did it take so long for it to make it into her books? Speaker 1 (3:05) I'm not sure. It's true. Music is... really important to me and has been since I was really young. Speaker 6 (3:12) I played piano all the time I was growing up. Piano was the thing that really got me through high school in terms of, you know, escaping a difficult adolescence, which is something most of us want to do. Music was how I got to college, just kind of on a fluke. I got a music scholarship. So I did study classical piano really intensely for one year Speaker 4 (3:35) in Speaker 6 (3:36) college. And I quickly figured out that I was not going to be one of the 10 people in the United States who would make it as a concert pianist. I wasn't, you know, of that caliber. And also... The life was too narrow for me. Every elective class that I took in college, whether it was, you know, English comp or anthropology or organic chemistry, was really exciting to me. I just always said, oh, I want to major in this. Speaker 6 (4:07) eventually found my way to the wonderful career of novelist in which we get to major in everything. Every new novel is kind of a deep dive into some whole new world of study. Speaker 6 (4:25) Music has remained really important to me. I've played in all kinds of bands. I've played in rock and roll bands and jazz bands. I play for myself. I play with my husband, who's a really good guitarist. And when I began this novel, I set out to write a love story. And I had the idea of having my protagonist be a really serious musician. who was in love with her art, in love with creating music. And then when she falls in love with a person, those two passions conflict. She falls in love with someone who really kind of doesn't get how intensely she loves music. And that's, you know, there is the beginning of a series of unfortunate events that kind of break her life into pieces. But once I began really putting the experience of music and making music into words, kind of translating that into language. I loved it so much that I thought, you know, I think this is my 19th novel. And I thought, why did I wait this long? This is really a lot of fun. And I also felt it was really timely. A lot of what this novel is about is the question of Why do we need art? What good is music? What does it do for us? Because right now in our culture, as people feel economically insecure, we're experiencing a withdrawal of resources from the arts at every level, from the NEH all the way down to second grade music classes. And I think this is... This is a dangerous trend for us to think of art as expendable. So I wanted to ask those questions and invite the reader to ask those questions. Speaker 4 (6:24) What is it good for? Why do we need it? Speaker 5 (6:27) And Livia, she goes to college for music. And there, she feels like a fish out of water a bit. Yeah, Speaker 6 (6:36) she Speaker 5 (6:36) does, Speaker 6 (6:36) very much. Speaker 5 (6:36) And I'm wondering, I imagine, did that comport with your experience in college? Speaker 6 (6:41) I grew up in a really little town in Kentucky. I did not know anybody else who loved to play the piano as much as I did growing up. I didn't know anybody else who loved reading books as much as I did. I was a weird kid. But, you know, there are kids in little towns everywhere. who are like that, who, for whatever reason, fall in love with literature, with books. And this is, there are class barriers to pursuing a life in the arts. And that's another thing I wanted to explore in this novel, is the question of class and art. And who, you know, why is it that a lot of us feel like the fine arts belong to you know, fancy people in cities? Why is it that a lot of the people of this country might not even feel welcome in a concert hall or a museum? So this is, Livia is a class migrant. Speaker 5 (7:43) Yeah. Speaking of class, so while she's at school, Livia meets a guy named Sigurd? Sigurd. Sigurd, who... Speaker 5 (7:52) I laughed a lot. He's the type of guy who literally read Marx's foreplay. Yeah. Literally Speaker 1 (7:57) reads Marx's foreplay. Speaker 5 (8:00) I'm not sure if that would work on me personally. Well, he's just Speaker 6 (8:05) that sexy. He's awesome. He's a handful, but he's