A Novel Of Operatic Beauty

William Gass' long awaited novel, Middle C, will be released this Tuesday.  It begins in Austria, 1938. Joseph father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland. In London with his family for the duration of the war, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. The family is relocated to a small town in Ohio, where Joseph grows up, becomes a decent amateur piano player, in part to cope with the abandonment of his father, and creates a fantasy self—a professor with a fantasy goal: to establish the Inhumanity Museum and is transported by his music.  A dazzling and at times frustrating novel of human identity, Middle C is unlike any book slated to be released this year.