THE GUARDIAN
Enigmatic variations
Rachel Hore on Disturbance of the Inner Ear
Saturday September 20, 2003

Despite her poor sense of hearing, Isabel, a brilliant young Russian-American cellist, is acutely aware of the musicality of sounds. She even experiences emotions in the language of music. Her creator's evocation of this mindset is one of the strengths of this painfully intense novel. For Isabel, however, her talent is a prison - since the death of her parents, she has been unable to play a decent note.
In some ways, their demise is a release; Poppa Yuri exercised a particularly monstrous brand of child-prodigy parenting, though his experience at a Nazi concentration camp offers sobering mitigating circumstances. One night, penniless, homeless and clutching a stolen cello, Isabel is rescued from a puddle in Milan by a passing surgeon, who just happens to be her soulmate. Doc Giulio, too, has been messed up by childhood, but via some tricky variations exploring themes of faith and restitution, he and Isabel look set to go out on a high note.