Exile Music, for Those Who Can Hear It
Perhaps it’s obvious, given the title, that Jennifer Steil’s “Exile Music” takes quite seriously the human experience of music.
It’s less obvious, but no less pleasing, that Steil delivers on the promise of the title, writing prose that is frequently lyrical and occasionally elegiac. Her novel, a Holocaust story that promises a new sort of plot and delivers it, masks its length with this sort of writing; it’s as if Steil is writing herself into a lather, and you’re along with her. Suddenly, it’s been 400 pages and you didn’t even realize it. (It helps to have an engrossing plot, too.)