The Time of Our Singing

By Richard Powers,

Book cover of The Time of Our Singing

Book description

“The last novel where I rooted for every character, and the last to make me cry.” - Marlon James, Elle

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted―and divided―family, set against the backdrop…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Time of Our Singing as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

As a musician, I was initially intrigued by the title. I soon realized that Richard Powers would interweave his characters’ love of classical music with complex issues of race within a family. The parents-to-be meet in 1939 at the historic outdoor concert featuring singer Marian Anderson, who really was denied the best concert hall. He is a German-Jewish refugee; she is an African American music student. Can love withstand society’s pressures tearing Whites and Blacks apart? Can the parents’ idealism protect their children?

The narrator moves back and forth between the parents’ and children’s stories, from the 1940s through the…

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