Instruments of Darkness

Sarah Robertson is the trade, scholarly, and reference editor of the
Canadian Book Review Annual.

Nadia, a divorced American writer in her late forties, calls herself
Nada to signify “nothingness.” A self-described “mistuned
instrument”—the incarnation of scordatura, or discordance—she is
researching and writing the story of Barbe Durand, a young French
maidservant who was found guilty of witchcraft (and, somewhat
incidentally, of infanticide) and executed in 1712.

Alternating with Barbe’s story (called “The Resurrection Sonata”
after Biber’s composition of the same name, “[t]he most unearthly
... inhuman scordatura in the history of the violin”) are entries from
Nada’s journal, The Scordatura Notebook, in which she converses with
her daemon, records memories of her dysfunctional childhood, and traces
the misadventures and disappointments that have convinced her that
“[t]he world is a lost cause, meaningless.”

As the novel progresses, parallels between its dark and compelling
narratives begin to emerge like themes in a musical composition. In the
end, Nadia’s longings for transcendence give way to a recognition that
“[t]he truth is neither permanent blazing light nor eternal gloom and
doom but flashes of love, beauty and laughter on a seething background
of shadow; the gleam and glint of instruments in darkness.”

Exquisitely crafted, vibrant, and stylistically dazzling, this English
translation of Instruments des Ténиbres, winner of the Prix Goncourt
Lyceens, is ultimately an exploration of lost illusions and the
transformative powers of art. Each of its beautifully written pages
exudes a singular, fierce intelligence.