Body And Soul

Frank Conroy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241132770 ISBN 13: 9780241132777

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., London, 1994

The story of a young man whose existence is transformed by the discovery of his musical talent. Poor, lonely and supported by an eccentric mother, he initially faces the task of growing up on the margins of life. Then, on an out-of-tune piano, his gift is revealed, but it is not without price.

About the Author:

Frank Conroy was born in 1936 and graduated from Haverford College in 1958. He is currently teaching at the University of Iowa, where he is director of the prestigious Writer’s Workshop. Conroy has written an autobiography Stop-Time, published in 1967, and his collection of stories, Midair, was published in 1985. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Harper’s Magazine, and Partisan Review. He divides his time between Iowa City and Nantucket.

From the Inside Flap:

ight of a basement apartment, six-year old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.

The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is “long gone, replaced by another city of the same name.” Against a backdrop that pulses with sound and rhythm, Body & Soul brilliantly evokes the life of a child prodigy whose musical genius pulls him out of squalor and into the drawing rooms of the rich and a gilt-edged marriage.

But the same talent that transforms him also hurtles Claude into a lonely world of obsession and relentless ambition. From Carnegie Hall to the smoky jazz clubs of London, Body & Soul burns with a passion and truth--at once a riveting, compulsive read and a breathtaking glimpse into a boy’s heart and an artist’s soul.