Her confiding in Will gives her space to see that she might be ready to return, but her feelings for Will-married twenty-something Will-are going way past the merely friendly. Will is so approachable, in fact, that Lucy finds a friend in him too, beginning to share with him her ambivalence about leaving music. As Lucy struggles to figure out who she is without music, Gus bonds with his new young teacher, Will, an easygoing and approachable guy. Since that’s an unforgivable sin to her domineering grandfather (and therefore to the rest of the Beck-Moreaus), her family is largely ignoring Lucy and concentrating on her similarly gifted younger brother, Gus. The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.Life changed for sixteen-year-old Lucy Beck-Moreau eight months ago, when she deliberately stepped away from her career as a piano prodigy and quit at the height of an international competition. Lucy’s journey of self-discovery is relevant for anyone, not just teens on the cusp of adulthood or those enmeshed in competitive undertakings of any kind. It forces her to think about what’s most important for her and then find a way to regain the joy she gets from music. She also has to question her reasons for seeking approval from older men in her life. Lucy doesn’t feel as though she can be honest with her mom, because she feels that she’s letting her mom and grandfather down by not continuing down the path they have paved for her.Īfter she gets into a conflict with her best friend, Lucy also has to ask herself if some part of her likes being in the spotlight and performing. The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr takes the reader inside the world of international piano competitions, but it’s also a look at family dynamics when everyone is so focused on what the children achieve.
But playing again, and forging a bond with a married man, proves to be more complicated than she thought. When a new teacher begins giving her brother lessons, Lucy seems to connect with him and she starts to seek his advice. On the other, she misses playing the piano, but she’s not sure how to go back to it without getting entangled the way she was before. On the one hand, she’s glad to have the pressure of always achieving, always competing gone. Now her younger brother Gus seemed poised to take her place, both in the world of music and with her family, as her mom and grandfather put their time and effort into pursuing recognition for him. Yet she no longer plays after walking off the stage at a competition the year before. All her life sixteen-year-old Lucy has been told she has a gift, a special talent for the piano.
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