Music for the Third Ear

Music for the Third Ear goes to the heart of the matter, in this age of civil wars, migrants, and refugees. The intimate meeting in Norway of traumatized refugees from Bosnia and still anguished survivors of WWII and the Holocaust reveals a world of tragically overlapping solitudes where the greatest victim, perhaps, is a child.

In her novel, Music for the Third Ear, Susan Senstad looks at the long-term psychological effects of traumatic world events. Survivors of the war in Bosnia meet survivors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. In that encounter, the reader will recognize echoes of how each of us struggles with our own acts of betrayal, our tenderness, our vulnerabilities.

In Norway, Hans Olav Kaldstad and his wife, Mette, await the arrival of the refugees from the Bosnian War to whom they have offered temporary shelter. Mette is the troubled, childless daughter of Hungarian Jews who survived Auschwitz; Hans Olav, a Lutheran, lived through Germany’s WWII occupation of Norway. Mette yearns to form a bond with the Bosnians. She hopes they will recognise that she too is a victim.

But the Bosnians, Mesud and Zheljka Nadarević, are fighting to piece together their marriage; they have no interest whatever in forming a bond with their hosts.

The pivotal character is Zheljka’s son. He was born of the organized mass rapes perpetrated by the Serbs as a weapon of war. When Mesud, who also suffered appalling atrocities, learned to his horror that his wife had given birth to the enemy’s child, Zheljka gives her son up for adoption. The rejected child reenters the lives of these two couples, the Norwegian and the Bosnian. The way each of them confronts and impacts the boy’s fate throws light not only on the effects of war on the human psyche, but also on the dilemmas at the heart of everyday lives and relationships

Editions

Reviews of Music for the Third Ear

“Powerful… Electric… Summarized, the novel sounds like a thriller. And indeed it is, but of conflicting moral constraints and psychic needs and political pragmatism…. Senstad is highly ambitious and risk-taking… this is fine writing in the style of Anne Michaels, in which the language seems to have been threshed directly from the feelings rather than from the usual literary sources.”

— The Guardian (London)

“A carefully woven tapestry of people in pain, each missing some essential element of happiness and wholeness, and helpless to reconstruct a life stunted by history.”

— George Robinson
The New York Times Book Review

“The anguish of souls echoes across an era… Ms. Senstad captures the difference that half a century has made in those who survive an era’s horrors. Global communication means, in a way, that guilt itself is globalized. The anger of the new refugees does not turn solely against those who injured them — and against themselves for being victims — but also against the world that watched the commission of the crimes on television, night by night.”

— Richard Eder
The New York Times

“[Senstad’s] sensitive and insightful writing allows us to put a face on the countless newspaper accounts of atrocities that occurred in former Yugoslavia.”

— The Anniston Star

“Lyrical… Devastating yet unsentimental… History is woven into the text with astonishing skill.”

— Scotland on Sunday

“Senstad pitches her characters headlong into one another and allows no soothing of frictions. Her plot thrives on the anger of unspoken injustices and on the compulsions which take root.”

— Independent

“Book of the Week, and I’m almost certain this will be my Book of the Year because I cannot imagine a more profoundly moving, important novel coming along… Senstad takes a handful of characters and, using the themes of childlessness, statelessness and morality, fashions a story that contains all the pain and longing — and yes, the joy — of the human condition.”

— Michele Magwood
Sunday Times

“Unusually perceptive… artful and compassionate, taking on difficult subjects without crassness or predictability. Senstad pits two wars and two generations against each other in a way that manages to be understanding and unjudgmental.”

— Maggie O’Farrell
The Observer (London)

“The harsh reality of the Yugoslav wars is brought home to a Norwegian couple in this searing first novel.”

— Publishers Weekly

“A look into loss and horror, in war and out, that is capable of compelling its reader — and leaving behind a sense of deep pity.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“This book is profound in its exploration of moral chaos, and devastating in its emotional precision.”

— Anne Michaels
Author of Fugitive Pieces

“Susan Schwartz Senstad has given her writing all her talent, mind, and soul — no holds barred. The result is a splendid power, an ability to shine light into the inner worlds of her readers. For which we all thank her.”

— Sena Jeters Naslund
Author of Ahab’s Wife

“… Tremendous in terms of writerly skill and of the heart that drove the pen…. Susan Schwartz Senstad’s ability to present us with characters who are flawed and yet with whom we deeply sympathise… This is a tremendous and important feat and speaks eloquently of the author.”

— Sonja Linden
Writer and Founding Artistic Director
of Visible Theatre Ensemble

“Lean, dramatic, fascinating and frightening… beautifully written and stunningly realised.”

— Thomas E. Kennedy
Author of The Copenhagen Quartet