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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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THE ENSEMBLE

Aja Gabel

A sweeping debut novel about four young musicians--a story of art, ambition, and love.
Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest, the angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness String Quartet.

In The Ensemble, each character takes the spotlight and picks up the melody, from the group's youthful rocky start through to middle age, through both devastating failures and wild success. As they navigate heartbreak and marriage, triumph and loss, betrayal and enduring loyalty, they are always tied together--by career, by necessity, by the intensity of their art, by the secrets they carry together, and by choosing each other over and over again.

The Ensembleis a heart-skipping portrait of artistic ambition, friendship, and the tenderness of youth. With heart, clarity and poignant understanding, Aja Gabel examines the relationships between trust, love, and the magical, messy world of making music.

Author Bio:A former concert cellist, Aja Gabel's writing has appeared inBOMB,Kenyon Review,Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She earned her BA at Wesleyan University, her MFA at the University of Virginia and has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Aja has been the recipient of awards fromAtlantic Monthly, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Literary Arts Oregon, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2012-2013 fellow in fiction. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, CA.
Available products
Book

Published 2018-05-15 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2018-05-15 by Riverhead

Comments

With uncommon clarity and empathy, Aja Gabel brings us inside the passionate, complex, and sometimes cutthroat intimacy that exists among the four members of a string quartet. A wise and powerful novel about love, life, and music. I didn't want it to end.

In the tradition of The Interestings and The Secret History, The Ensemble teases apart the strands of an intense and long-lasting group friendship that both bolsters and binds its members. Aja Gabel's powerful debut offers a sensitive portrait of four young musicians forging their paths through life: sometimes at odds with each other, sometimes in harmony, but always inextricably linked by their shared pasts.