Luisa Domic: A novel

by George Dennison

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060154802
• ISBN13: 9780060154806
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Compelling and insightful

Dennison wrote what I think is the best single work on education we have, The Lives of Children, which is filled with insight into how children learn and how we can support that learning. Luisa Domic is a novel in which Dennison's same insightful voice comes across; the book is one sharply realized revelation after another. On the surface it is a tale about political violence and its repercussions. The narrator lives in rural Maine, and a friend of his is shuttling survivors of the military coup in Chile to asylum in Canada. The friend stops on the way with Luisa, a refugee who has been a professional pianist, and whose family has almost certainly all been murdered in the coup. Luisa's brief stay in Maine is restorative for her, even more so when another friend visits, a composer from New York whose music Luisa knows and plays. But the sweetness of this rural and artistic idyll may not be enough to make what has happened to her bearable. On another level, Dennison meditates on civilized society, often symbolized by many different kinds of music-making, and juxtaposes society, with its cultivated beauty and its potential fall into violence, with nature, and its inherent sanity, yet undeniable savagery. Dennison conveys the beauty and the paradoxical darkness of both nature and civilized society. Each description, whether of horses galloping, old Maine farmers, musicians performing, or children playing, is infused with sensitivity and awareness. This is among the most alive books I know, and among the most intelligent.