Uvi Poznansky wears a coat of many colors. Originally from Israel where she studied Architecture and Town Planning then moving to the US where she studied Computer Science and became an expert in Software Engineering, Poznansky managed to combine the design elements of two studies into unique formats. And she has accomplished the same with the other side of her brain - making visual her ideas (she is an accomplished painter, drawer, and sculptor who has enjoyed exhibitions both in Israel and in California, her present base) and making words in poetry and in short stories and children's books. MY OWN VOICE was her first part of her novel APART FROM LOVE: Still Life with Memories and THE WHITE PIANO is the second part. Having read them together allows sharing the scope of what came before this book – and sharing that is important.
Uvi’s skill at both visual and written art is outstanding, but her history of diversity does not end there. The story of this elegantly designed novel is a dissection of a family life and the alterations that occur with the family framework both by intent and by happenstance. It weaves themes of disparate parents - an accomplished pianist Natasha married to the elderly Lenny who cares for Natasha as she descends into the darkness of Alzheimer's Disease and compensates by taking on a very young and uneducated, somewhat socially coarse redhead vixen named Anita - and the manner in which the couple's 27-year-old bright son Ben copes with the situation.
Poznansky's unique way of unraveling this complex story is by making the `chapters' vary as told by Ben, as told by Anita, and as told by Lenny. She understands fully how to bring Ben's confusion about both his past life with his parents and the current situation with his mother's decline and his father's reactive compensation by bonding with a beautiful young, if raw, companion. Few authors would be able to pull off the manner in which the apparent polar opposites of Ben and Anita begin to bond and how Lenny integrates into their apparent clandestine relationship, but Poznansky has the visual and verbal and architectural skills to create this maze and guide us through it.
She capitalizes on the use of the chapters being related in the voices of the characters: Ben relates the situation as he remembers and experiences it in eloquent finely honed grammar while Anita speaks to us with the slang that at first can be grating but morphs into communication that allows the reader to experience the change that develops in her relationship to Ben. In other's hands this could become cloying as a technique, but with Poznansky's skill she uses it as an interface between evolving personalities that makes her story ring true.
So much more could be said about the manner in which the author brings understanding to the hierarchies of relationships - parental, couple, aging, developing, and ones influenced by disease, but that would be robbing the reader of the joy of discoveries that Poznanasky accomplishes in this profound novel. The title is so well chosen: the phrase of the title is the key that unlocks much of the fragile mystery that hovers here. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 15
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From the Publisher
My Own Voice
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The White Piano
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The Music of Us
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Dancing with Air
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Marriage before Death
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| Story | Falling in love with Lenny should have been the end to all of Anita's troubles. For her, it's only the beginning, when family secrets start unravelling. His ex-wife, Natasha, is succumbing to a mysterious disease. Can Anita compete with her shadow? | Coming back to his childhood home, Ben is unprepared for the secret: his mother, Natasha, who used to be a brilliant pianist, is losing herself to mysterious disease. His father’s new wife, Anita, reminds him of the way she used to look. | Lenny goes as far back as the moment he met Natasha during WWII, when he was a wounded warrior and she—a star, brilliant yet illusive. Natasha was a riddle to him then, and to this day, with all the changes she has gone through, she still is. | Fooling German espionage may cost Lenny the trust of the girl who captured his heart. Will Natasha discover his secret D-Day reports, disguised as love letters to another woman? | After D-Day, her photograph appears on the most-wanted German propaganda posters. Who is the girl with the red beret? Why does she step into his life when he is led by SS soldiers to the gallows? What makes her propose marriage to a condemned man? |
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