![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Moses's ardor impels him to Vienna and its vibrant opera scene, where his brief appearance on stage allows love to triumph before, unsurprisingly, tragedy brings down the curtain. Dazzling, enchanting, and epic, The Bells is the confession of a thief, kidnapper, and unlikely lovera boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing becomes both his lifes tragic curse and its greatest blessing. His ability to sound like an angel brings him into contact with a wealthy family, sparking an impossible love affair with a beautiful but crippled woman. A tormented choirmaster castrates Moses to preserve his beautiful voice, transforming him into a "musico," a soprano whose voice never deepens, and who will never be a man. When Moses says, "I wished I could dissolve into sound," the reader shares his frustration. ![]() into something beautiful." Harvell, however, shows his own limitations when he seeks to describe the resonance of music. Cast from his home, he joins a choir, discovering that he can mold "that ocean of sound. Moses, born to a deaf-mute in a belfry, possesses a unique bond to music. Chronicling the journey of 18th-century singer Moses Froben from his Swiss village to Vienna, this debut novel strikes many melodramatic notes in an overwrought plot squalor, beauty, horror, forbidden love, tragedy, and triumph splash broadly, sometimes artfully, but often with operatic excess. ![]()
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