Joan's Picks: The Instrumentalist and A Very French Affair

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable: Anna Maria della Pieta was brought up in a Venetian orphanage, where unwanted babies were posted to the nuns through a slot in the wall. This was in the early 18th century, and by the age of eight she was widely recognized as a musical prodigy with an ambition to become the best violinist and composer that Venice had ever seen. Her tutor at the time was Antonio Vivaldi, who may have appropriated her compositions as his own and denied her the limelight in which he was used to shining. Rich with the atmosphere of Venice of the time, and radiant with musicality, this is terrific. 

A Very French Affair by Maria Hoyle. Maria is a Kiwi in her 60’s who was dating but not finding lasting happiness and then met a guy whom she saw only a few times before he suggested she move to live with him in France where he was going to live in a mill by a river in a tiny French village. What could possibly go wrong? This is  a highly entertaining romance in the beloved style of A Year in Provence, about grabbing life with both hands whatever your age, what it means to belong, the joys and frustrations of French living, and why you should always look closely at a map before emigrating. Ultimately, though, it is a story about the greatest adventure of all. Love. 

LISTEN ABOVE

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks atb.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time to talk books, and I'm joined by Johan McKenzie.
Good morning, Hello, What have you got for us today?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
My fiction today is a book called The Instrumentalist by
Harriet Constable, which is historical fiction set in Venice in
seventeen hundred and four and it centers around an orphanage
called the Dalla Pietra, which is an interesting building. It
has a slot in the wall and women who have
babies for which they are unable to care come along

(00:39):
and they post their little babies through this hole in
the wall through to the nuns who then bring them
up until adulthood. Remarkable story, and it's true, it actually happened,
and it's girls in this orphanage and they pretty famous.
I was going to say world famous, but they're certainly
very famous at the time because they had an extraordinary

(01:01):
girl choir which was renowned around the world. And this
this young girl, her name is Anna Maria. Her mum
posts her through the slot, the nuns bring her up
and at the age of eight, it's recognized that she
has a prodigious talent for music. She's an extraordinary violinist,
and she can write music, and she develops an ambition
to become the greatest violinist and composer that Venice has

(01:24):
ever seen. And Venice at the time was a real
center for the arts. And her tutor is Antonio Vivaldi, who,
of course we all know from at least the Four Seasons,
and he was accustomed to the limelight and being the
most famous violinist in town, and wasn't best pleased when
a young girl came along who might usurp him. But

(01:44):
some of the premise of the book is that it
is entirely possible that it was actually Anna Maria who
wrote the music for which Vivaldi took credit, which is
really interesting. It's a bit of a theme in books
these days. We talked about the Jodi Pico recently about
how it may not have been Shakespeare who wrote the
plays in some of the Sonnets, So there's an element

(02:05):
of that in this, but it's beautifully done. Anna Maria
has synesthesia synesthesia, yes, which is where in sound you
can see colors, and so the way that the story
is told is very lyrical and colorful, and it's set
against the backdrop of Venice at the time, which was
a really interesting city back then. So you've got the

(02:25):
canals and the bridges and the people who inhabit the city.
There's quite a bit about the street women, clearly because
they would be very often the users of the orphanage's service,
but also the aristocrats. Anna Maria during her time with
the Daughters of the Choir, she played and sang I

(02:46):
believe in front of I think it was Casanova and
one other really famous person whose name escapes me, but
certainly there was a reputation fantastic.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I like that idea of just the reimagining history a
little bit. Wei, just questioning in the narrative that we
have over something.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, it's beautifully done. Now.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm very intrigued to your thoughts about a very French
affair by Maria Hoyle, because quite often we hear of
people taking off on what sounded like quite mad, crazy adventures,
and it's always interesting to find out how they turn out.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yes it is, isn't it. You read it and you think,
my gosh, what a brave woman. Ah, she's a New Zealander.
She was in her sixties not so long ago, when
she was using online dating trying to find a good partner.
After far too many that weren't, met a guy who
at that time lived in Nelson. She was in Auckland.

(03:37):
They had I'm going to say something like three dates.
There weren't very many, after which he said, well, actually
I own a mill on the water in a village
in France and I'm going back there, so why don't
you come and live with me? And she decided to
pack up her life and go and live with a
man she hardly knew in a small French village. Well, Francesca,

(03:58):
you know what could possibly go wrong. So she finds
herself in France, and of course there're two different people there.
You know, they're on in life, and as you live
you develop your own idiosyncrasies and ways of doing things.
And they tried very hard to respect each other's ways
of doing things, but it was quite difficult. She got

(04:18):
there and discovered that he was a bit of a
motor head. He was right into rally driving and motorbike racing.
And she found herself at an event where you know,
the reek of petrol in the air, which was complete
anathema to her. And of course she had Peccadillo's that
he then struggled with that. She says at one point
in the book, it's a curious thing to embark on
an adventure, to hurl yourself headlong into it, to tell

(04:41):
the world and yourself look at me, throwing caution and
postcodes to the wind, only to realize that the thing
that you crave most of security. So I'm not going
to give you the spoiler and tell you how it ended,
but what I will say is that she said that
she wanted to write a love story, and she did.
I just don't think it's the one that she thought
it was going to be.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay, So this is a bit like a travel log.
It's also a love story, yes, a memoir. It's a
year in Provence, a year and many years on There
we go a very French affair by Maria Hoyle and
also the instrumentalist by Harriet Constable. Thanks so much, Joan,
We'll talk next week.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
To see you then.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.