Testimony of the Senses

"Testimony of the Senses" is the story of Emilio Tramonti, a boy who grows up believing his father died before he was born. On his seventeenth birthday, Emilio learns that his life has been predicated on a lie-his father is actually alive. He leaves home, seeking to understand, and eventually to confront, the man who ran rather than raise his child.

There is nothing quotidian in the telling of this tale. Emilio is conducted toward his fate by an omnipresent companion, Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony, which premiered on the date of his birth and provides the aural architecture of his life. His mother's idolatrous obsession with Michelangelo's Piet transforms her from a coddler to just another absent authority figure. A false, former New York Philharmonic violinist teaches Emilio to hear, but ultimately betrays and loses his trust. An annotated, photo-filled copy of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," dating from his father's time as a photographer during World War II, holds the mysteries of his parents' past-and a carefully preserved dead lizard.

And in his final movement, increasingly insensate from wandering Lear-like through the storm surrounding and suffusing him, Emilio is forced to face judgment for the choices he has made.

"Testimony of the Senses" is both bildungsroman and billet-doux, to literature, language, and music. It challenges the reader to think, to question, to seek out answers. How do we grieve? Why do we hope? What are we willing to believe in blindly, on faith alone?

Ultimately it is Emilio's voice that matters most in all these matters, Emilio's voice that carries the story along. Rhythmically, melodically, almost compulsively.