From the bestselling author of Above the Fire, Concert Black chronicles a biographer and the famous conductor who will stop at nothing to keep her from exposing his secrets.
Biographer Ellen Wroe approaches the eminent conductor Cecil Woodbridge with a proposal to tell his life story. Despite her reputation as a serious author with a shelf of prizewinning books, he rejects the idea and then actively tries to stop her work. As Wroe pursues Woodbridge-maestro, cellist, conductor-king-she discovers that beneath his mighty façade and towering ego lie a dark history and a troubling connection to her own past.
Written in the tradition of Ian McEwan's Atonement, Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, and Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time, Concert Black takes readers from the modern symphony halls of Boston and Chicago to the frozen streets of postwar London. As subject and biographer veer toward a collision, both must confront the price of ambition and the cost of art.
"In this masterful work, Michael O'Donnell leverages a gripping plot to reveal the costs and consequences of ruthless ambition. He does so within the rarefied world of classical music, capturing its nuances and rituals with welcome authenticity. Though music resonates poetically through these pages, the flaws and virtues of human nature stand at the core of this most engaging tale."
"Concert Black is the twisty portrait of a ruthlessly ambitious star conductor and his unauthorized biographer-an intriguing novel of secrets, conducted with as many satisfying shifts of tempo and tone as any Romantic concerto. Swinging through time and space, from Chicago to London to the Scottish Highlands, Michael O'Donnell's new novel impresses with its intimate knowledge of the music conservatory and concert hall. It asks not only what price success, but what obligation to the truth every writer bears."
"A gripping tale of music, friendship, and reckless ambition rendered with the masterful touch of a literary maestro."
"Concert Black takes the reader into the world of classical music, with all its rivalries, challenges, and egos. It is a story of ambition and obsession, of beauty and cruelty. It is wonderfully imagined and told with skill and sensitivity."
"Concert Black is a tense and atmospheric novel about secrets, corrosive ambition, and the power of music. I tore through it."
"Concert Black is a thrilling novel about ambition, love, biography, and music that stretches effortlessly across decades and continents. Compulsively readable and lovingly researched, it sidesteps simplification at every turn and leaves the reader instead with vital moral questions. A deeply resonant and intelligent page-turner."
