Partita
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did you find yourself slowing down for it? Something about a piano-teacher book seems to invite a blanket and a quiet hour.
Was there an instrument, a lesson, or a teacher in your own childhood that you either loved or quietly dreaded? Livia's studio made a lot of readers go back to a bench somewhere.
Teaching piano on a farm could read as a small life or a full one, depending on the day. Which way did it land for you while reading, and did the book make you feel tender toward that kind of quiet life or restless about it?
Kingsolver writes rural Tennessee with real affection. Which small domestic or outdoor detail of Livia's present-day life did you find most comforting to sink into, the kind of thing you would happily have read ten more pages about?
The novel is built like a partita, a set of linked movements rather than one straight line. Did that back-and-forth between the conservatory years and the present feel soothing to you, like returning to a familiar refrain, or did it keep you on edge?
Class sits under almost everything here, especially in the conservatory world. Was there a moment where you felt protective of Livia, where you wanted to reach into the page and tell her she belonged?
The book calls itself a love affair between a life and an art. Thinking about the whole arc, how did it leave you feeling about the thing you once wanted badly and set down? Comforted, grieved, or a little of both?
Without giving away where it all lands, what did this book seem to believe about whether a person can be forgiven (by others, or by themselves) for the shape their life took? Did you close it feeling like Livia was carrying her past or finally setting some of it down?