Editors Reads Verdict
Powers's most emotionally direct and socially engaged novel. The musical sections are among the most accurate and affecting in American fiction, and the racial history from 1939 to the 1990s is rendered with genuine complexity.
What We Loved
- The musical detail is extraordinary — Powers's knowledge of classical and vocal music permeates every scene
- The racial history of America from the New Deal to the Civil Rights era is rendered through specific lives rather than abstraction
- Jonah Strom is one of the great portraits of artistic genius in American fiction
Minor Drawbacks
- The length (631 pages) demands sustained engagement
- Some readers find the physics metaphors that Powers weaves into the narrative more distracting than illuminating
Key Takeaways
- → Music is the art form most able to transcend racial categories — and the novel tests whether that transcendence is real or wishful thinking
- → The attempt to live beyond race in mid-20th century America was not delusion but necessity — and its costs were borne by the children
- → Genius in music is both a gift and a category that removes its possessor from ordinary human life
| Author | Richard Powers |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Pages | 631 |
| Published | January 1, 2003 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction |
| Difficulty | Advanced |
| Best For | Readers of ambitious literary fiction and anyone interested in the intersection of music, race, and American history in a multigenerational novel. |
The Easter Sunday Concert
On Easter Sunday 1939, Marian Anderson — barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because she was Black — gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 75,000. In the crowd: David Strom, a German Jewish émigré physicist, and Delia Daley, a Black woman from Philadelphia. They meet. They marry. They have three children.
The novel follows the Strom children — Jonah, David Jr., and Ruth — through the decades that follow. Jonah becomes a classical tenor of astonishing ability, performing in the great concert halls of Europe and America, trying to inhabit a musical world that is theoretically raceless. His brother David accompanies him. Their sister Ruth becomes a civil rights activist who regards their choice as accommodation.
The Musical Argument
Powers’s argument — rendered through music rather than stated — is that music offers a version of human experience that exceeds racial category, but that this version is purchased at a price. Jonah’s art is real; his ability to exist in it without engaging the social history of his body is not.
The Time of Our Singing is Powers’s most personal novel — he has spoken of his own mixed-race family background as partial inspiration — and his most emotionally direct. It is also among his longest. The musical renderings — of Bach, Handel, Britten, American spirituals — are technically accurate and genuinely moving.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Time of Our Singing" about?
At the 1939 Marian Anderson concert on the National Mall, a German Jewish émigré physicist meets an African American woman. Their children — David, Jonah, and Ruth — grow up in New York in a household defined by music and by the refusal to admit that race determines who you are. A multigenerational novel about music, race, and the cost of idealising beyond the possible.
Who should read "The Time of Our Singing"?
Readers of ambitious literary fiction and anyone interested in the intersection of music, race, and American history in a multigenerational novel.
What are the key takeaways from "The Time of Our Singing"?
Music is the art form most able to transcend racial categories — and the novel tests whether that transcendence is real or wishful thinking The attempt to live beyond race in mid-20th century America was not delusion but necessity — and its costs were borne by the children Genius in music is both a gift and a category that removes its possessor from ordinary human life
Is "The Time of Our Singing" worth reading?
Powers's most emotionally direct and socially engaged novel. The musical sections are among the most accurate and affecting in American fiction, and the racial history from 1939 to the 1990s is rendered with genuine complexity.
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