Secret Harmonies

By Andrea Barrett

Book Overview

Andrea Barrett's novels have received resounding critical acclaim, inspiring comparisons to Gail Godwin and Anne Tyler. In Secret Harmonies , she creates a wonderful portrait of a family struggling to make sense of their lives in the rural hills of western Massachusetts. When childhood sweethearts Reba Dwyer and Luke Wyatt marry, they expect no surprises. But now that Luke--friend of Reba's childhood, friend of her heart--is her husband, discord enters their lives. Secret Harmonies is the utterly absorbing, moving story of what happens to this couple and to the eccentric constellation of loved ones swirling around them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671731378
• ISBN13: 9780671731373
• Release Date: March 1991
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

a novel in the higher range

I was transported by this story of Reba, the musically gifted daughter of a musically gifted chicken farmer. Yes, the setting is rough; the towns are small, the people are poor, but there is huge beauty in this small setting. So many plot elements affected me; her early years singing in church while stoned on hash, the story of her pregnancy, her painful relationship with her lonely brother, her self-expiating string of affairs with married men. Reba's lovers see her as a naive poor girl, easy pickings, not important. She's exploited in a painfully real way, seduced as much by their privilege as by their sexual advances. Novels that include an examination of the American class structure make me uncomfortable. I think that's the point.But this isn't polemic; it's a lovely and realistic story. The peripheral characters, mostly her family members, are sketched in all their weird beauty; a sister with Down's syndrome who writes a poetic epic, her lonely brother, barely able to master his own desire for Reba, her absent father, her mechanical mother. I don't know anything about musical theory, about scales and chords, but this novel actually communicated how the world is percieved by the musically oriented. This novel is beautifully-written without ever becoming self-consciously poetic. Every word in here works.