Counterpoint: A Memoir Of Bach And Mourning

"How to mourn a mother whose harsh judgments framed your childhood? This question haunts Philip Kennicott’s gorgeous memoir. Kennicott, the Washington Post’s senior art and architecture critic, is at pains to empathize with his mother, while also asking, “What does it mean to truly know a piece of music?” He braids his fraught maternal relationship with his fraught relationship to music, rendering a story that operates masterfully on several levels. In the end, Counterpoint meets Kennicott’s own criterion that “every good book or great piece of music carries with it the possibility of redemption.”"