Deception and a father’s loss

Sonata for Miriam

A Novel

Linda Olsson

Penguin: 304 pp., $15 paper

There is a certain kind of book that pulls the heartstrings of its readers. Often, these books end up on bestseller lists and are promoted by Oprah. “Go on! Let it all out!” they seem to say. “Have a good cry! Surely, there’s something in here, some loss, some tragic misunderstanding that reminds you of your life!” The best of these are very well-written -- it takes an ear to tap the great aquifer of regret beneath our culture. It takes insight to create the tension readers feel when a character makes an important decision based only on past fears. It takes a facility with plot to sustain suspense. So what’s the downside?

“Sonata for Miriam” begins with a father’s loss of his beloved daughter, his only living family. After Miriam’s death, Adam Anker feels he has no future and is forced to live in the past. His past, however, is peppered with mystery. Writing a path through a shrouded past is where Linda Olsson really shines. Her first novel, “Astrid & Veronika,” was full of missed moments and mysterious tragedies. The past, in both these extremely readable novels, is more richly written and more fascinating than the comparatively flat present.

Adam, a talented violinist and composer, was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1941. His father disappeared, and the woman he thought was his mother was strangely distant. Deciphering his childhood becomes his raison d’être, but it is not easy -- so many of the key players have died, or their lives have been interrupted by war. He learns, as many of us do, just how precisely he has re-created the patterns of his parents and grandparents -- in the way, for example, that he has raised his daughter without access to or knowledge of her mother. Without his daughter, he is forced to acknowledge the true emptiness of his life: “[P]erhaps for those who have grown up without knowing their beginnings, there will always be this lingering uncertainty. Happiness for them will always seem fleeting, volatile, because they lack the security that comes from knowing that even if happiness is lost, the memory of it will provide some comfort.”

Olsson understands how memory works -- the combination of fact and fiction, photographs and moments. She understands how regret works on the psyche and how infuriating it can be on the page, a kind of mildew between the covers of a life. She understands how to use landscape -- in the case of both novels, the New Zealand she knows so well -- to heighten the mood of the story. Readers will love this book, especially in these times when the finer, nobler emotions seem like luxuries.

Perhaps the downside lies in the fact that as much as we may have similar problems, similar triumphs and tragedies, we, and the characters who live in novels, are also unique. Our sorrows are our own private ecosystems. Each character ideally should be familiar but unreproduceable.

It is also true (and I hate to get all highbrow here) that emotions, while thrilling and beautiful, are not the highest use of human potential. Allowing them to be the only bridge between writer and reader limits a book’s potential. It is the difference between a good read and a book that will be read for centuries. There are many standards. This is only one.

Salter Reynolds is a Times staff writer.

susan.reynolds@la times.com