Friends and Lovers: Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel

Here is a delightful "friends and family" contemporary novel focused on classical musicians well into their 50s. Bridget, a cellist, and Will, a pianist, are two legs of the Forsyth Trio, a chamber group forever in search of a violinist they can count on. The two have maintained a close, non-romantic, best friendship for more than three decades, since they were students at Juilliard, and have been each other's mainstay of emotional support though all of their personal triumphs and disappointments.

Bridget comes from great wealth and a musical background, with a nearly ninety-year-old composer father who lives resplendently in a castle-like mansion in Litchfield County, Connecticut. She is the never-married mother of twenty-nine-year-old fraternal twins, Isabelle and Oscar. She became pregnant after undergoing artificial insemination when she felt her biological clock ticking away and a more conventional romantic relationship appeared not to be in the cards. She has a spacious Manhattan apartment and a somewhat ramshackle country house not far from her father's.

Will, on the other hand, lives in a typically tiny West Village (Manhattan) walk-up apartment. Money is always an issue for him, and he scrambles to survive on freelance gigs and teaching. Bridget has always been financially helpful, and in fact, he has a dedicated space reserved for him at her Connecticut house.

Bridget is anticipating a romantic summer alone with her latest boyfriend, but everything is upended when he breaks up with her at the last minute, her daughter Isabelle abruptly leaves her job abroad and comes home to crash, followed by her son Oscar, who has left his husband, Matt, thinking he has been unfaithful...and Will experiences unexpected twists and turns in his life as well.

There is a sort of Shakespearean-like comedy air to the further developments that occur that summer, but all will eventually work out and be revealed, though how that takes place is for the reader to find out. 

It's enjoyable to spend a little time with these musicians, their friends, and relatives, in a pleasant setting. It's a novel that mainly entertains, without stress or heavy questioning. 

The Eternity and the Unlikeliness of Love: Find Me by André Aciman

An incredibly beautiful novel, full of the lyrical writing and exquisite descriptions that make Aciman's work so vivid. Each character is as completely rendered as in a Sargent portrait and every setting is as detailed as a Church landscape, though in Rome, Paris and New York. Even something as ordinary as the purchase of fish in a market takes on a special beauty.

The novel examines the nature of love and its complexities. The relationships explored are both romantic and familial. A young woman and an older man fall in love as the result of a chance meeting, and the woman cares for the everyday needs of her dying father, a younger man and older man create their own bond of love, and the young man, now older is reunited with the love of his youth. The stories are complex and interlocking, yet simple...they are about the power of love and how it fulfills us individually and in our relationships.