Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano

Andrea, already a promising and ambitious classical pianist at twelve, was diagnosed with a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis that threatened not just her musical aspirations but her ability to live a normal life. As Andrea navigates the pain and frustration of coping with RA alongside the usual travails of puberty, college, sex, and just growing-up, she turns to music-specifically Franz Schubert’s sonata in B-flat D960, and the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein for strength and inspiration. The heartbreaking story of this mysterious sonata-Schubert’s last, and his most elusive and haunting-is the soundtrack of Andrea’s story. Sonata is a coming of age story that explores a Janus-head miracle -Andrea’s extraordinary talent and even more extraordinary illness-in a manner, reminiscent of Brain on Fire and Poster Child. Like the goshawk becomes a source of both devotion and frustration for Helen Macdonald in H Is for Hawk, so the piano comes to represent both struggle and salvation for Andrea in this extraordinary debut.