As someone who enjoys playing musical instruments (but hasn't trained formally past my freshman year of college), I really appreciated the musical aspects of this memoir. The story of Kym's life and how she became the musician she is was very fascinating. Her relationship with her violin is also very fascinating. I gave this 4 stars rather than 5 for two reasons. First, I think the author had trouble showing the difference between how she saw the situation then and how she sees it now. The part about her violin being stolen especially. When you're writing a memoir as though it's happening in the moment, you have to put yourself back both physically and emotionally. The reflection would come after the fact and obviously separated. But things were a little too mixed for me. Second, even though I greatly appreciate music and what happened to her, I don't think I would get along well with her in person. That's an emotional choice I know, but so it is. I did think this was a really good book though, and I would recommend it for readers who like nonfiction about classical music or memoirs that are more reflective than action-packed.

This is a thoughtful beautifully written novel of a woman finding herself. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Passion.

That is what this book inspired in me. The music major (piano/voice) in me was jumping up and down as I read and listened to this book. By the way, I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book from NetGalley.

As I have often said, it is hard to rate an autobiography. It is their life, their truth. Even so, if you have practiced any instrument for any length of time you feel what the author feels about her violin. Min Kym has written a readable and relatable story. She describes her passion to play the violin in great detail. Stagefright doesn't seem to enter her world as she is with her best friend at all times. Her life goes downhill when the violin disappears. I won't give spoilers but that is enough. I have been without my piano (by the way, I have a love/hate with the piano) and worse found times when my voice didn't work (bronchitis, etc.) and I know I was a mess!

I don't want to rewrite her book or tell much more. I think musicians will appreciate this book the most but others will enjoy it, too.

The biggest thing that has happened to me since reading this is I want a violin to play with! I'm watching sales hoping. I know I might never get past Twinkle, Twinkle, something I did learn when I tried it a long time ago, but, I want to try!

Some sections of this memoir were fascinating. Specifically the parts where she detailed the pressures she felt as a child prodigy. Anytime she discussed her relationship with her family was some of her best writing. But for the most part, she just kind of lumped information into each chapter, not following a chronological order or focusing on a specific theme for each chapter. And though she states in the epilogue that she's not blaming anyone else for some of the giant life-altering mistakes she made, she spends a few of the earlier chapters sounding like she's definitely blaming others. And, yes, some of the problems she faced were actually because of someone else's judgement call. But, she was the one who decided to sit back passively and let another person (usually a man) make important decisions for her.

I had never heard of Min Kym before reading this memoir, but I have since looked up a few of her performances. I am spellbound by her story and her music.

In this book, Kym offers us a glimpse into the life of a child prodigy: the sacrifices, heartaches, stress, but also the triumphs that accompany the strengthening of inborn talent. We grow with her and her violins until she finds her beloved Stradivarius and are heartbroken alongside her as it gets stolen from a cafe. This violin was her soulmate and its loss caused the author to unravel and go through a grieving process.

SPOILER ALERT: Though ultimately the two are reunited, the reader feels privileged to have been able to "witness" this story.

Would make the basis of a great fictional work. The author portrays being a prodigy and obsession well.

Over the years, I’ve read my fair share of memoirs written by people ranging from celebrities to business people to complete strangers whom I had never heard of until the moment I read their memoir. A lot of people I know don’t like to read memoirs because there are too many out there that are written in an overly-pretentious manner or, worse yet, may come across as genuine when in reality they are not. Even though I share these same concerns when it comes to memoirs, I still read them because occasionally, there may be a gem in there that I would have regretted passing up on reading. Min Kym’s Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unstrung – a heartfelt memoir about a violin prodigy who loses the precious instrument that defined her entire life – is definitely one of those gems.

Before I go into my thoughts on the book, let me just say that from a writing perspective, there were definitely issues – lots of them. In addition to the many grammatical and sentence structure errors, the writing was a bit all over the place at times, which was distracting and broke the flow of the story at certain points. Normally, I would give a book with such flaws a low rating, but I didn’t this time because of several reasons, the main one being that the version I read was an “uncorrected proof” copy so I already expected that there would be errors. For me, I’m generally okay with overlooking these types of errors as long as everything is fixed before the final published version goes into print. The other reason of course is the fact that this book is a memoir, a personal story written by someone who does not write for a living, so I tend to be a bit more lenient with what I am willing to tolerate where the writing is concerned. For those who may have lower tolerance in this area, I would suggest reading the final published version (and hope that the editors caught the errors and fixed them). The third -- and most important – reason is explained in detail below….

Surprisingly, this memoir affected me on a personal level like no other memoir that I’ve read up to this point has done. Perhaps it is because I share some cultural similarities with the author Min Kym (more on that in a minute), plus a few aspects of her personality as well as some of the experiences she went through parallel my own in certain areas. [For the record – no, I am not a child prodigy and I do not play any instruments, nor am I musically inclined (I love listening to music but can’t sing to save my life, lol). To be honest, many of the music-related references in the book were completely lost on me and I didn’t try for even a minute to keep any of it straight because I knew I couldn’t.] Kym is a Korean woman who grew up in England while I am a Chinese woman who grew up in the U.S. – we may be from different countries, but there is the shared cultural identity of being raised by “traditional” Asian families in the Western world and the struggles this brings about. I was absolutely able to relate to many of the “issues” she brought up about culture and family and how different – ridiculous even -- the way of thinking may seem to those who may not have been brought up with those influences in their lives. Many of the struggles Kym talked about are things I’ve experienced as well – for example: the sense of being bound by cultural obligations to do/not do or say/not say certain things, putting your best face forward and not letting the “weakness” of your true feelings show, constantly saying yes and letting others manipulate and take advantage against your better judgment, living the life others want you to live rather than the life you want to live, going along and putting everyone else’s needs before your own because it is instilled in you to obey and not to question...etc. A lot of this really hit home for me and in a way, it was reassuring to hear someone going through similar struggles not being afraid to articulate exactly how she felt.

One of the things I appreciated most about Kym’s story was the honest and genuine way in which she laid everything out in the open – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Never once did she deliberately try to paint herself in a good light – instead, she showed us her true human self, showed us her flaws, her stubborn personality, her raw emotions. It was almost as though she did not care whether people would judge her for being foolish, irrational, naïve, etc. – she just needed to tell her story, to pour her heart out, get what had been suppressed for so long out of her system….and let the chips fall where they may. This was a unique aspect of Kym’s memoir that we don’t often see in other memoirs, which I found refreshing and for this reason alone is already worth reading.

I would absolutely recommend this book, though as I said earlier, read the final published version rather than any uncorrected proof or advance galley versions. I don’t say this often but this was one book where I regret reading an ARC over an actual published copy because I feel like I could have done more justice to the book in my review if I had done so.

Received advance reader’s copy from Crown Publishing via Penguin First-to-Read program and NetGalley.

Kym is a child prodigy, studying in Purcell School at the age of eight, the youngest in the building. Her childhood free time is eaten away by practicing to near perfection for various events where she had to perform with her violin. Then, about four years ago her violin gets devastatingly stolen, and she goes in a downward spiral since she lost a large part of her identity.

Memoirs are always an extremely hard thing for me to rate, just because I feel like "who am I to grade someone's life?" So instead, I choose to focus on the author's writing ability. In this book, I thought that Kym had a great introspective voice, which was accomplished by having enough emotional time and space between the theft of her violin to now when she's writing.

However, at some points I feel like it had too much of a regretful tone, like: "if it did this, then this would have happened" or "if I didn't do this, than this wouldn't have happened." We all have people in our lives that seem to backtrack like this, and it occasional grated on my nerves in which the frequency of that sort of domino-affect dialogue was being created.

The thing that I liked the most is how the author describes music connecting/relating to your life, how it flows all around you, how you can feel it in your body. At some point she almost had me in tears with her descriptions of how integral her violin was to herself.

I picked this one because my husband is a violinist. He speaks of his instruments in ways I couldn't understand. Reading <i>Gone</i> made me understand him a bit better. I really enjoyed reading about the author's life as a violinist, since her childhood until the climax of the story, when her precious violin gets stolen. It was also interesting to observe the cross-cultural aspects, and the struggles Min and her family had as Korean immigrants in the UK. It is a book for classical music lovers and memoir lovers alike.

"I never went through that time when I asked myself, “What shall I do with myself?” Never. My violin had answered that question for me. I’d been told what I could be, and now my violin and I knew it to be true. In two years I was to be a world-class violin soloist. It wasn’t a burden. It wasn’t even a demand. It was my life. I was eight and a half years old."
-Min Kym

From her earliest years, Min Kym was an extraordinarily gifted violinist. As soon as she held her first violin, she knew she had found her life's work. Everything she did from then on revolved around this almost obsessive love for playing her beloved violin.
There were drawbacks. To further her career, her family moved from Korea to England, and they all had to adjust to a new culture, as well as to the unusual life of a budding prodigy. She was obviously quite different from other children and, having little free time to play, she spent most of her time with adults. Many things were sacrificed to nurture her amazing talent.
Because of her Korean roots, she tended to be compliant and an easy mark for people who wanted to take advantage of her. She found it extremely difficult to say no, which led to a crisis in her later life that devastated her and caused her to halt her career as a soloist just as she was becoming highly successful. During this difficult time, in so much despair that she could barely function, she wrote this book.

It's a wonderful book. That someone with such extraordinary talent in music could also be such a skilled writer seems not only unlikely, but somehow unfair. But it is true. The book is well organized, beautifully written, without any excess. Maybe the discipline she developed practicing the violin enabled a disciplined approach to writing. The proof of her skill is that I, as a person with very little knowledge of, or serious interest in music was captivated by this book. It's more than just a chronicle of a musical genius. I could relate to her struggles and was rooting for her the whole way. I wish her the best as she continues on in life. I plan to follow her career to see where it leads her.
Highly recommended. There are many layers to her story, and I believe almost anyone would enjoy reading it.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A look into the world of a young, talented professional classical musician

I enjoyed this book very much. It's a true story (google it for more details). Min is a child prodigy, and she explores what that's like throughout her book. Her particular talent is the violin, so the readers learn about some of the songs that showcase talented violinists. I looked up each song she mentioned as she went through them, only to realize after I'd read the book that she offers a CD to accompany the book. It has many of these songs on it. Very cool! She also writes about the history of violins throughout the centuries, and which luthiers (a maker of a stringed instrument) are most famous for constructing violins. In the midst of all this, there's a crazy story about how her super expensive (think the price of a big house), rare (think one-of-a-kind) Strad violin gets STOLEN. I've already recommended this book to a couple of friends. A wonderful read for lots of reasons!

The spellbinding memoir of a violin virtuoso who loses the instrument that had defined her both on stage and off -- and who discovers, beyond the violin, the music of her own voice
Her first violin was tiny, harsh, factory-made; her first piece was -Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.- But from the very beginning, Min Kym knew that music was the element in which she could swim and dive and soar. At seven years old, she was a prodigy, the youngest ever student at the famed Purcell School. At eleven, she won her first international prize; at eighteen, violinist great Ruggiero Ricci called her -the most talented violinist I've ever taught.- And at twenty-one, she found -the one, - the violin she would play as a soloist: a rare 1696 Stradivarius. Her career took off. She recorded the Brahms concerto and a world tour was planned.

Then, in a London cafe, her violin was stolen. She felt as though she had lost her soulmate, and with it her sense of who she was. Overnight she became unable to play or function, stunned into silence.

In this lucid and transfixing memoir, Kym reckons with the space left by her violin's absence. She sees with new eyes her past as a child prodigy, with its isolation and crushing expectations; her combustible relationships with teachers and with a domineering boyfriend; and her navigation of two very different worlds, her traditional Korean family and her music. And in the stark yet clarifying light of her loss, she rediscovers her voice and herself. (via Goodreads)
This memoir is as musical as it gets, without being too jargon-y for the casual music listener. Min Kym has a beautiful, unique narrative voice - much like that of her one of a kind violin.

I love music. I always have. My dad is a professional music teacher, and I've had so many people tell me about how he helped them fall in love with music. To them, I say, believe me, I know, because he taught me to love it like he did.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I played French Horn through high school, and I desperately miss being in that world but don't have the money or time to get back into it.

That's probably why I was inspired to make this playlist, including several pieces performed by the author herself! I hope you'll check it out!



"Playing isn't simply the notes, it's what you bring to it, not simply your ability, but your intelligence, musical, and otherwise."
This quote is so true, and this book is full of beautiful prose like this, which I really appreciated. You could feel Min's love for music, for her violin, and for her teachers throughout.

I also loved that Min talked about her experience being so different from many others because of the choices she and her family made to get her to where she is today. I thought her discussion of her South Korean culture's effect on her musical life was very nuanced, though this is very much not my lane, so I'll leave it to someone whose lane it is.

I had an issue with part of this, though. Min's struggle with anorexia literally was the very last two pages in the book, and not mentioned anywhere else in the story. It felt very thrown in and came at me from out of nowhere. I think this could have easily been included in the section about Min growing up.

However, I had some issues with this book - mainly in the way it was organized. It takes a long time to get to the point where Min's violin is stolen, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did feel a little bit meandering at times.

I also absolutely hated Matt from the beginning. Dude was creepy as hell.I'm not entirely convinced he didn't have her violin stolen on purpose, because he and Tarisio's are really the only ones who profited from the violin's theft. I have no evidence to back that up, but if this were a mystery novel instead of a memoir, he'd be my prime suspect.

I did love the end of this story, though - Min starting fresh with a new violin that is more suited to her now.

I think this was a four star book for me overall. The organization really bugged me, but the story was a great one in its heart. You can pick up a copy through Amazon, Indiebound or your other favorite bookseller!

four stars and one empty one meant to signify a four star review

Disclaimer: All links to Indiebound and Amazon are affiliate links, which means that if you buy through those links, I will make a small amount of money off of it.

I don't usually read biographies and memoirs but when I saw this book and read the book description, I felt compelled to read it. Why? I don't even know who Min Kym is and I haven't heard of her, but I had to read her memoir. I'm not sure exactly what prompted me to request the galley but I did. It could probably have something to do with the fact that I tried and had to give up playing the violin because of the extremely soft, almost missing flexor tendon on my pinky finger, that I can't properly hold down the strings to produce the right sound. So yes, this book intrigued me.

The book opens with a scene where Ms. Kym is checking in her bags at the airline ticketing counter and was told she had to check in her violin and something terrible happens then the next chapter opens at the very beginning, the one event that would catapult her into the world of music and competitions and the different teachers and mentors that she's had over the years and what each of her violins meant to her.

I play the piano and I did attempt to learn the violin but I am by no means a professional musician but I do understand this phrase when I came across it in the book when Ms. Kym said, “…I knew right away that holding a violin, playing a violin, was not simply for me, but it was me.” There are some instruments that is very easy and comes naturally to a person and in my case, despite the initial resistance, it was the piano. Back when I was first learning the piano, I preferred the voice and romance of the violin but all we had was an ancient, Weinstein & Sons upright piano with a cracked sound board. But I figured, learning how to read music on a piano will translate into all other instruments anyway so I learned and played the piano. Years later, when I was working, I bought myself a beginner violin, a Hoffner, because I still wanted to learn how to play another, more portable instrument. It was either a violin or a flute but the violin won. It was slightly awkward for me to hold, and the sound was just as Ms. Kym described her first violin as "harsh" sounding and the harshness of it was probably largely due to my inexperience as a violinist. I think I tried and practiced on that violin for a year to two and gave up. The instrument was just not for me. Five years later, I sold it to the mother of another beginner violinist. Hopefully, that child will fare better than I. So for everyone who can play a violin, I'm highly in awe of you guys.

Moving halfway across the world and having to leave my piano or my Yamaha Electone Organ behind, I started to miss playing the piano at around the 7-year mark so when I finally purchased a Yamaha Portable Grand DGX-660 Digital Piano and played music again for the first time in 7 years, I completely understood how Ms. Kym felt when she said, “…I felt like a creature released, alive in herself for the first time" because that was exactly how I felt when I played the piano on my DGX-660. Sure, there is nothing like the sound of a good acoustic instrument but I was looking for a more portable, and practical instrument since I can't fit a baby grand piano anywhere in my house and I honestly don't want the cost of maintaining one and I want to have the rhythms and different voices that my Yamaha Electone Organ has just in the form of an 88-key piano.

Reading this book, I'm not sure if Ms. Kym was romanticizing her "relationship" with each of her violins but her attachment to each of her instruments, especially to the 1696 Stradivarius was really something that made me think, perhaps that feeling of attachment only applies to violinists? Why? Because she described her rare, 1696 Stradivarius violin as "…It felt as if three hundred years ago, Stradivarius had held his hands over a length of wood and fashioned this violin just for me, that all her [the violin's] life, my Strad had been waiting for me as I had been waiting for her… It was love at first sight, love and everything else: honor, obedience, trust, everything… This was marriage till death do us part, made in heaven right here on earth… I'd met my soul mate." See what I mean about romanticizing violins? Ms. Kym did mention that pianists aren't like that at all about their pianos, which I feel to be true because pianos are not as portable (unless you get a digital one that you lug around everywhere) and pianists usually just play on whatever piano is available at the venue unless you're some hotshot piano player who has the means and money to transport their grand pianos everywhere. Although, I have to say that pianist are very loyal to their brands. There's always a debate going on as to which piano brand sounds better: Steinway & Sons, Yamaha, Kawai, or Baldwin to name a few and we pianists, would defend our brands to the death especially when it comes to our personal instruments. I mean, you can't really demand a venue to provide you with the brand and model you prefer to play on unless you ship your own. So yes, I do agree with Ms. Kym that pianists, don't have this level of attachment to their instruments like violinists do.

This book climaxes to a point in time where her Strad was stolen and the depression that came after it, which was understandable and very dark. The confusion that surrounded the whole thing and the painful reality of finding and buying another violin. She finally ends up with an Amati violin and the book closes with this heart-wrenching realization, "…My Strad is Gone but I can still hear the call of it. My Strad is Gone but I can play again. I have memories of the Strad and the Strad will have memories of me. When it is played again, out in the open, on stage, in front of an audience, it will remember me. It will open its heart and remember me" to which these words resonated so much with me when I went back home last December 2016 and saw how dirty it's keys were, how neglected and forlorn my Weinstein & Sons upright acoustic Piano was and my Yamaha Electone Organ was. Both are in sad need of repair (all the black keys of the foot pedals of the Yamaha Electone Organ are not producing sound anymore) and both need cleaning and the Weinstein badly needs to be tuned and I was a bit outraged and terribly saddened that no one cared for them both. They're both gone from me but both instruments and I will have memories of each other, of the love and care we shared for 12 good years.

In conclusion, this book has changed how I look and feel about the instruments that I have throughout the years (though not as many as Ms. Kym has gone through with her violins) and I learned a lot on how a violin is made and how structured a life of a child prodigy was. I've always thought about what if I started early with the piano and went on to Conservatory music instead of getting a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting and what if I had a job as a musician instead of an accounting job? This book has given me insights to what a musician's life is like so at least the wondering on my part has lessened and to be honest, I wouldn't trade a thing but I would've liked to have at least tried it first (like going to Conservatory Music in College instead of Accounting) to see how far I could go with my music. Gone by Min Kym is a well-written, emotionally charged, thought-provoking and sometimes dark memoir but in the end, you can clearly see the subtle changes and the triumphant come back of a wiser, stronger Min Kym.

I felt for the author as she shared how her identity was totally wrapped up in being the child prodigy, and the violin actually became who she was. I was also shocked at how those close to her took advantage of her trust and robbed her of this identity. Sometimes being famous isn't such a great thing!

5 Stars, more if I could give more.

"My violin was born in 1696, the year Peter the Great became Tsar of Russia. It's seen off Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, two world wars, and so far, the atomic bomb. People come, people go, violinists live, violinists die, empires rise and fall and the violin lives on, washed from shore to shore on tides of wealth, fortune and history. But this is just a speck of time for my Strad."

This book had a strong personal interest for me and I was thrilled when Crown Publishing trusted me with the galley to review it. It took me a while to be in the proper mental place to read it, because I knew whatever Min-Jin Kym had to say about the theft of her violin, it was going to be a story of poignant loss. Just looking at how all her biographical info and most of her slim recorded output have disappeared from the internet gives you a glimpse of how much was stolen from her that December day in a Pret-à-Manger in Euston Station back in 2010. Some of it I'm assuming she removed, since she's a different, stronger Min Kym these days, but some... the music world moved forward without her, while she stood lost without her instrument. For a time she, too, was gone.

Kym begins this book by carefully giving the reader a glimpse into the shooting star life of a child prodigy. Indeed, that was my initial draw to the book, rather than the sensational part of the story, the theft of Kym's beloved Strad. Some people seem not to like this early description of her nascent talent, thinking that it's boastful or overblown. Kym is giving you context, so that you understand her gift but also how much playing the violin was woven into the very fabric of her being. It defined who she was, how she was, what she did with her every waking moment. There was also the sheer burden of the expectations.

"What's a child prodigy? Here's another stab at it. It's a means to another person's ends."

When I was a young teen, my grandmother lived in the 'cottage-in-back' of a family with a child prodigy pianist. I remember listening to Naomi play and starkly noting her skill, her grace on the keyboard that stood in stark contrast to my own hard-won Bach, Chopin or Scriabin. Let me be frank. She was so good, I couldn't even be jealous of how good she was. It would have been like my being jealous of a child pianist who was up in Asgard. The years rolled by, my grandmother moved, Naomi grew older, played at the Aspen Festival, left for Harvard and then.... and then.... she disappeared. I mean, she didn't really, literally, but she clearly found another fulfilling life beyond being a child prodigy and it didn't even include being a piano soloist. How did that happen, I wonder? Does she miss playing? Where do grown up prodigies go nowadays? It was hard enough to live up to expectations in the 18th century. But now, with all the distractions, the media and publicity pressure...

I was intrigued by the story Kym might tell us, beyond her loss of her beautiful instrument. She was a prodigy who grew into a woman who was at the cusp of a very promising career. She got through the treacherous distractions of adolescence and trained as a young adult with the great Ruggiero Ricci, who said she was “The most talented violinist, both instrumentally and musically, I have ever played with. She seems to play with her whole being.” She played a Strad and was on her way. And then she, her violin and everything in her world disappeared.

The bildingsroman phase of the book serves to ground you in the magnitude of her loss, and of the revelations losing her violin brought her about her life, her choices. The book is about so much more than professional thieves knicking an instrument whose value they knew nothing about. It's about culture and female role socialization. It's about that moment of arriving and not knowing where or even who you are. It's about how weariness and a moment's concession to another's lack of vigilance can destroy your world.

Some may think the book doesn't have a happy ending. Min-Jin Kym still, heartachingly, doesn't have her Strad, for reasons that seem incomprehensible to anyone who has never struggled with the lethargy and despondency of depression, or the culture of saving face. But I prefer to think that Kym, playing a violin she has rescued from obscurity, has built something sustainable out of what she lost. It isn't a fairy tale life or career. It's real, vulnerable, and a work in progress that she's bravely shared with her readers in this book.

For those interested in hearing Kym play, only her first recording from 2001 is still readily available, (you can still find CDs of her Korean release of Brahms if you look for them) but she has a new solo album coming out at the end of March 2017. It is available in the US and U.K. iTunes Store. Of course, it's titled "Gone." I'm going to refer to it as "The Essence That Remains."

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Wa...

Wow! a delicious elegant read. It is so wonderful reading about a Korean family,,not to mention a brilliant genius musician! I loved this. I love Korea and this only brought me back there. A wonderful elegant read. I recommend this terrific book to everyone who loves talented children. Thank you NetGalley and Crown Publishing. I will remember and think about this story forever. Wonderful! Heart wrenching...

A world-class violinist writes about growing up as a Korean prodigy in England, losing control of her life and career to various Svengali types, and most importantly the theft of her Stradivarius.
As a photographer I’ve grown attached to several of the many cameras I’ve used in my career, but never to this level. On the other hand, there aren’t any cameras almost 400 years old, let alone considered the pinnacle of technology. It’s apparently much different with violins—and not just the famous Strads—as Min Kym goes into a devastating depression when her partner in music is snatched away at a restaurant. Despite how she describes the feeling of losing her violin, you can tell that’s just the tip; her real feelings. . . there’s no words for it. And the way she wrote that scene was intense! Worthy of a thriller. I instinctively feel sorry for her, but I know she wouldn’t want that.
There’s plenty of other stuff here that’s equally painful, but just as much is uplifting, even humorous. There’s a little piece on why she loves Kreisler that was fantastic. The psychological insights, both from the violinist and the human being, are astounding, and the writing is so smooth, like a languid Vivaldi phrase.
Whoa, I’m really blown away. Far beyond any expectations when I started this. It reminds me a lot of Lindsey Stirling’s book, even though because they’re from such vastly different worlds it comes across as quite dissimilar.
This is most likely going to go on my list of top books of the year.
4.5 pushed up to 5/5

This is a fascinating and poignant memoir of a young woman's whose life as a violinist defines her very being. It shows the dark side of a high level career---teachers, mentors, friends, families plus the world of priceless violin agents, buyers and brokers.

This book is so much more than I expected. Like any memoir, the author tells her story, but this author has an exceptional ability to describe her thoughts, feelings and emotions so the reader not only understands but has a chance to see, feel and become a part of what's happening In Min's world. Based on the description, I doubt I would have bought the book, but after reading it I am so glad I had this opportunity. It is a very special gift this author has and one that should be experienced by a much broader audience of readers than I fear will be drawn to the book as presented. This is a huge challenge if the book is to reach it's full potential. It is a very special experience indeed. I am not a musician or in any way part of the classical music scene. I'd never heard of Min Kym before seeing it and reading the brief description on NetGalley. I don't even know why I requested it or started reading it...but I'm glad I did. The entire experience far exceeded my expectations.