Chopin People

Eve Challoner Pella is a MPP constituency assistant and a past Executive
Committee member of the PTA in Toronto.

This is the story of the emotional, spiritual, and sexual foundations of
two marriages. The lives of Joe and Leonora Salerno (working-class
Italian immigrants) and Stefan and Maya Voitek (wealthy art patrons;
respectively, Polish and Thai) intersect when Stefan hires Joe to build
a gazebo. Stefan is head of the “Foundation,” a society dedicated to
promoting recitals of Chopin’s music. The “Chopin People” of the
title initially appear to be the socialites who use the Foundation to
clothe themselves in “culture.” As the story advances, however, it
becomes apparent that the real Chopin People are those who aspire to a
spirituality that is grounded in sensuality and earthiness. Marring this
well-plotted Toronto-based novel is the author’s tendency to use
geographical name-dropping as a substitute for strong descriptive
writing. Typographical errors further detract from the book’s
credibility.