Synopses & Reviews
At the age of eighteen Paul Porterfield dreams of playing piano at the world's great concert halls, yet the closest he's come has been to turn pages for his idol, Richard Kennington, a former prodigy who is entering middle age. The two begin a love affair that affects their lives in ways neither could have predicted. "Absorbing from start to finish" (The New Yorker), The Page Turner testifies to the tenacity of the human spirit and the resiliency of the human heart.
Review
"A compelling portrait of a young musician at once lover and protégé, and painfully aware of the need to disentangle the two. The Page Turner shows Leavitt's always discerning yet tender fascination with love, a love complicated and deepened through a multitude of forms— between a mother and her son, between generations, despite inequality and working with and against our pride. Leavitt weaves an honest and humane tale from the passions that subtly undermine our desire, the memories that complexly structure and inhibit our present attachments, the psychology of need and envy that obscures the object of our longing, making it 'never mine.'" Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
About the Author
David Leavitt's first collection of stories, Family Dancing, was published when he was just twenty-three and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize. The Lost Language of Cranes was made into a BBC film, and While England Sleeps was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. With Mark Mitchell, he coedited The Penguin Book of Short Stories, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, and cowrote Italian Pleasures. Leavitt is a recipient of fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He divides his time between Italy and Florida.