Mozart: A Novel by Robert Howse Search Amazon for other books by or about Robert Howse. Rating: Reviewed by: Marie Jones

It's hard to say what the characters in Mozart: A Novel really want. Between their individual pursuits of sex, influence and control over their own destinies are smatterings of starcrossed romances, lost opportunities and political upheavals that have caused them to question their own ideals, they seem an awful lot like people we know. People who are connected by forces outside of themselves, and yet will often do everything in their power to ignore or deny that connection.

So, they seem to plow ahead with the determination that they will in some way shape their worlds. From the lead character, a rather boorish writer named Arthur Rizler, his fiercely devoted younger wife, Maya, and a cast of supporting characters each with their own agenda, including Lucy, a lovelorn bi-polar female physician extraordinaire and the man she loves, Jeremy Stuart, a selfish entrepreneur-in-the-making who is obsessed with Maya...these people are real flesh and blood examples of how human lives are not only messy, but interestingly so. As Rizler struggles to maintain both his career and his identity in a world that holds vast idealogical differences, he encounters obstacles that both frustrate and challenge him. When he dreams of writing fame and influence begin to diminish, along with his youthful vigors, he comes to the realization that we all do as we walk the path of life - that new dreams await, along with new challenges. Change is the only constant.

Rizler, as arrogant and grumpy as he can sometimes appear, loves his wife, still finds sexual attraction to other women invigorating, seeks the highest ideals, opposes cultural destruction and crassness...and is something of a prophet who is entirely misunderstood in his own land. He goes to Prague to lecture on Mozart, which makes up the backbone of the plotline, and finds instead that he is faced with a total re-examination of his marriage (all four of them), his desire for fatherhood (despite having fathered five children already), his career goals (perhaps a novel?) and his political place in the world (from liberal to neocon in no time flat!). His struggle makes up the crux of this intriguing and entertaining novel.

The stories of Maya, Jeremy and Lucy, the woman Jeremy ultimately finds true love with, make for interesting subplots that tie the main storyline together. In Mozart: A Novel everyone is searching for something, and in the end, they all manage to find it, albeit not quite in the manner they had hoped for or expected.

Howse, who has quite a background in the academic and political fields, does well with dialog and narrative. The plot structure often falls weak, and there are many typos (typical of self-published books), but I found this story engaging, and the characters just flawed enough that they kept my interest going as I explored their worlds, both separate and intersecting.

Mozart: A Novel is fiction that forces you to actually think about the story and the ideals being presented. Imagine that. A novel that makes you think.