The Time of Our Singing

This week I've been reading The Time of Our Singing, another overblown intergenerational tale of a family's particular problems in embracing the American Dream. (It's clearly far too soon to be reading this after Middlesex .)

The book's about what happens when a German Jewish physicist marries an African-American classical singer and produce three mixed-raced musical prodigies in the 1950s.

It's full of descriptions of listening and performing classical music and these parts are really really good. I haven't read a book about music this convincing since Vikram Seth's tale of lovelorn violinist An Equal Music.

But I'm having trouble with the other main theme which is how bloody difficult it was to be neither black nor white in 1950s America, even if you weren't in the South. Lynchings are described. These kids are neither fish nor fowl and cause consternation wherever they go. When the family travels together, the mother sits in the back of the car to avoid trouble. Synagogues are getting vandalised and their European cousins haven't been heard of since before the War.

I'm at the point where the civil rights movement has just started but i think this is going to take over because they've foreshadowed that one of the kids grows up to join the Black Panthers.

Anyway, I'm not really believing in this stuff. I mean in the context of the book - not that it happened. After all I've read Soledad Brother and Alice Walker. And I think most of my problems are because yesterday I found out this photo of Richard Powers.

And I wonder why I'd believe he could imagine himself back in that time and position any better if his parents were Jewish and African Amercan. Because that's clearly what my subconscious would prefer. I mean, it's fiction. Silly brain.