The Passion of Tasha Darsky / overture

Overture (published in paperback as The Passion of Tasha Darsky) draws readers into the glamorous and competitive world of classical music, capturing its harsh demands and its magical power to move performers and audiences alike. With rare mastery, Yael Goldstein Love offers a sweeping tale of female ambition, unflinchingly rendered in all its danger, confusion, and passion.

Natasha Darsky, “the most famous violinist since Paganini,” lights an erotic fire under every piece of music she plays, telling each composer’s story in a singularly sensuous way. The daughter of a renowned art dealer in New York City, Tasha grew up in a world where artistic achievement was the highest value and her father’s opinion determined the rise and fall of many an artist. Her prodigious musical talent, discovered when she is a girl, blossoms at Harvard, where she begins to compose music. She is soon swept up in a passionate love affair with Jean Paul, a young composer whose innovative music is hailed as revolutionary. Under Jean Paul’s shadow, Tasha abandons her dream of writing music and turns toward performance. Channeling the frustration and muted fury of this choice into her playing, she creates a sexually charged sound that packs concert halls around the world year after year. Her young daughter, Alex, follows in her celebrated footsteps, but it is Alex’s talent as a composer that brings mother and daughter together—and tears them apart in ways Tasha could hardly have anticipated.

Reviews

Yael Goldstein [Love] is a writer of great emotional precocity. . . The relationships she has created are genuinely affecting and complex. . . Overture shows signs of brooding genius.
—The New York Times Book Review

Overture is nothing short of magnificent.
—Charleston Post and Courier

[A work of] fiction deeply involved with intellect and ideas, warmed by sensitively delineated emotions and propelled by strong storytelling. Overture establishes Yael Goldstein [Love] as a writer with a distinctive voice of her own.
—The Los Angeles Times

With this first novel, Yael Goldstein [Love] offers us an exploration of the intense passions and pains of creativity . . .The writing is smooth and supple, enticing you into the story and easily persuading you to read every word. There are moments of great clarity here, descriptions that flash out to illuminate small, intimate human truths.
—The San Francisco Chronicle

Until Overture, I never would have believed an author could successfully use words to convey something that can only be heard. But Goldstein does it. It wasn't that Goldstein's writing made me hear that sensual, angry violin. It was that she made me ache to.
—The Berkshire Eagle

Passionate, moving . . . a literary treat.
—The Tucson Citizen

Goldstein utilizes language in such a way as to make even tone-deaf readers hear strings in their minds.
—The Jerusalem Report

An impressive debut. . . Goldstein paints a vivid picture of the world of the arts from behind the scenes: the studying, composing, selling, and performing and the people who are driven by the need to create.
—Library Journal (starred review)

Overture is . . . sophisticated yet accessible, intellectual but also sensual. 
—Time Off

A splashy literary debut. . .a highly refined tale of love among musical geniuses.
—Kirkus

*A marvelous first novel - sophisticated, nuanced and sexy. A precociously gifted woman trades romantic love for artistic passion, then must learn to balance motherhood with her art. This narrative is as tense and vibrant as an extended note from a solo violin. Goldstein writes about musical composition in a way that approaches music itself.
—Emily Raboteau, author of The Professor's Daughter

An intoxicating symphony about love, a moving love story about music, Overture is a truly marvelous debut novel. Encore! 
—Katharine Weber, author of Triangle and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Yael Goldstein has given us a delightful, passionate book about the life of the mind, the life of the body, and the life of the heart. Overture is a mesmerizing and wise novel, simultaneously unsparing and tender, and compelling from first page to the last. This is a big book in the best possible way.
—Rachel Kadish, author of From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story

Yael Goldstein's passionate, precocious novel of creativity and love understands with great wisdom the way all of us -- parents and children, artists and appreciators -- must fight to find our own voice so that we can be free without resentment to love the world that made us. 
—Jonathan Rosen, author of Eve's Apple and Joy Comes in the Morning