Ann first meets the unsettling prodigy, Genevieve at a childhood piano recital, then in high school, they are thrown together again. While Ann is simply trying to get by, Genevieve is an outcast, a defiant genius, an object of ridicule who stays aggressively aloof..On a few memorable occasions, however, she reaches out to Ann. The girls find themselves in a relationship far short of friendship, yet more intense and essential than alove affair.
Years later, Ann still measures herself against Genevieve, and stories of this vanished classmate begin to reach her in unusual ways. Now Genevieve is a junky, a fussy intellectual, a middling folk singer, a prophet, a soul-eating demon.The conflicting accounts cast doubt on Ann's fundamental memories, and the sudden reunion of the two women leads to unanticipated revelations and astonishing violence. Paced like a thriller, Other Love Songs is an entertaining literary novel of friendship and false messiahs.