【1998 Archives】

998 ArchivesEnsembleis more than just a story about a professional string quartet.

Sure, it tails four young musicians that make up the Van Ness Quartet — the formidable Jana on first violin, sweet Brit on second violin, the prodigy Henry on viola, and brooding Daniel on cello — over the course of almost 20 years, but dig into its pages and you'll realize that the novel is also a sublime character study and complicated unraveling (and rebuilding) of the lives of these musicians during their formative young adult years.

It was a pleasure to sit across from author Aja Gabel and discuss how her debut novel came into the world and the complicated nature of writing about fluctuating and intimate friendships.

We meet the quartet in the throes of a competition, and right off the bat we are confronted with many themes that pulse through the novel. There's the competitive aspect of chamber music we're immediately introduced to, but in particular, we see the delicate tightrope that the ambitious characters walk as they try to sustain the connection that they've cultivated as a chosen family.

Gabel, a musician herself, went through various versions of the story before landing on the four-part novel told through each of the musician's perspectives.

"Right now the book rotates through all four perspectives a few times, and in the beginning it was like you were only going to hear from the first violinist first for 60 pages...and then you would move on to a different perspective," she explained. "But what's great about music is you hear all of the voices at once, and it felt like such a shame to only hear one voice at a time in the book. So I was like, no, we've got to get to them faster."

Regardless of your familiarity with classical music, the story of zeal and fellowship will carry you through the terrific novel.

As always, we ended the interview with some recommendations, courtesy of Gabel who happens to be a huge fan of anything in the horror genre and suggests we all grab a copy of The Third Hotelby Laura van den Berg, which will be published by Macmillan in August 2018.

"It's a mystery about a woman whose husband goes missing in Cuba, and she has to find him — and he's at a horror movie conference," she said, explaining it was one of those books where you tell yourself "I haven't read anything like this."

The Ensemble, on the other hand, is now available for purchase wherever you choose to buy books!