Music from a Distant Room

Stephanie Johnson

Oct 2012 · Sold by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited

About this ebook

A moving novel about a blind son with a love for music that surpassed sight and gave him a vision uniquely his own. A fortnight after jazz pianist Carl Tyler's funeral, his lover Tamara has one week to go before she leaves New Zealand to return to her native Chicago. His mother Nola wants to solve the mystery of her son's death, to know everything Tamara might be able tell her, so she begins an account of Carl's early life, in the hope that Tamara will remember a clue to what happened at its end. Nola was a dental nurse in the 1960s. Her life revolved around her spotless dental clinic at the local school, the 'murder house' the kids called it. She didn't know it, but by taking an interest in young Brett's bruises, and meeting his father Bernie, her life would be changed for ever.

About the author

Stephanie Johnson is the author of several collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays and adaptations, and many fine novels. The New Zealand Listener commented that ‘Stephanie Johnson is a writer of talent and distinction. Over the course of an award-winning career — during which she has written plays, poetry, short stories and novels — she has become a significant presence in the New Zealand literary landscape, a presence cemented and enhanced by her roles as critic and creative writing teacher.’ The Shag Incident won the Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2003, and Belief was shortlisted for the same award. Stephanie has also won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and was the 2001 Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. Many of her novels have been published in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in 1999. She is the 2023 recipient of the Prime Minister's Award for Literature. The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature describes Johnson’s writing as ‘marked by a dry irony, a sharp-edged humour that focuses unerringly on the frailties and foolishness of her characters . . . There is compassion, though, and sensitivity in the development of complex situations’, and goes on to note that ‘a purposeful sense of . . . larger concerns balances Johnson’s precision with the small details of situation, character and voice that give veracity and colour’.