29. The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
This book follows the four members of a string quartet over the 18 years they spend playing together. I could not get into this book at all. Often times the characters blended together for me and I didn’t care about their lives at all. It mostly felt like nothing happened or when things did happen there wasn’t enough depth to them to really give me a sense of how the characters related to each other. There were exactly two chapters in this book that the author could have redeemed it for me, but then chose not to actually follow through on what she started. Had the second of those chapters actually followed through on what was said at the end of the first of those chapters and then those two chapters been the end of the book I would have at least thought it ended really well. Instead the author negates what was said at the end of the first chapter and then the book goes on for 60 more pages. I’m not someone who has any experience or particular affinity for the classical music world, so perhaps if I had I would have felt differently about this book. As it was I did not care for it all. I give it a 4 out of 10.