Kind of Blue

Ten days after recording the now legendary jazz albums, Waltz For Debby and Sunday At The Village Vanguard, as part of the Bill Evans Trio, double bassist Scott LaFaro was killed in a car crash on the streets of New York.

Intermission, Welsh author Owen Martell's first book in the English language, is a fictionalised account of the aftermath of LaFaro's death, specifically the impact it had on Evans. Focussing in turn on Evans' brother, mother, father and finally Evans himself in a sequence of narrative baton changes, it charts the pianist's self-imposed seclusion following the loss of his friend.

And as a study of grief, Intermission succeeds, in the main. Bill's family tread softly around him, aware of his fragility and, in his brother's case, of his increasing dependence on heroin. After putting him up for a couple of weeks, dark miserable weeks in which the only light relief comes in the form of his niece, the Debby his waltz is named after, Harry (the brother) ships Bill off to Florida to recuperate further with his elderly parents.

Interesting premise though this is, the book lacks any real emotional heart. It is rather cold and distant and that prevented me from truly engaging with it, truly caring. This may well be a fair reflection of Bill's state of mind at the time but the result is a monotone, a book made up of a handful of shades of grey. It is, I am afraid to say, a litle boring in places.

That being said, it is probably just that Martell's style didn't affect me the way that Bill Evans' piano playing does. I love listening to Waltz for Debby, it is an album I play often when I am curled up in an armchair reading and I enjoyed Intermission the most when I was reading it with Evans, LaFaro and Paul Motian (drums) as accompaniment. The music added something, context perhaps, that the writing along was unable to sustain. I suspect that if you are a fan of Richard Ford (another cold, dry, emotionless writer I just don't get) then you may well love this, and I would not be at all surprised to see it well reviewed and picked as one of the books to watch out for in 2013. It is published in January.

I really wanted to like this more. I wish I had.

Comments

[Trev]

Interested in this Scott; Waltz with Debby and the Vanguard sessions rank highly in this household. As does Richard Ford, currently reading his fine debut 'A Piece of My Heart' a bit of Americana noir that is totally different in tone from his later observations. I'm not sure that I'd call him "dry, cold and emotionless" though, 'Independence Day' had me in pieces... Still, each to his own. Thanks for your writings this year; you led me to 'Secret Sisters' (great) and 'Magic Time' (better), 'The 100 year Old Man..." next on the pile once I've dispatched Ford... all to the soundtrack of Peter Broderick's sister...