Partita

In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver explores the inevitable losses and alterations sustained by the body in the course of a long life, presenting these losses as analogous to (and sometimes intertwined with) the more abstract losses of loved ones and dreams. Through the intertwined stories of Livia, her father Willard, and her former lover Sigurd, the book demonstrates that life exacts a toll on the body, leaving behind a fragmented self that must learn to survive in a new state, finding new paths where the old ones have been foreclosed. This theme is underscored by the epigraph from Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison, which notes that “Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt” (iii). This quote, spoken by Morrison in an interview with journalist Juan Williams at the Connecticut Forum in 2001, suggests that finding a way forward in spite of loss is the challenge that ultimately gives a life its meaning. 

Livia’s journey as a musician most starkly illustrates this theme. Her ambition to become a concert pianist is all-consuming, requiring thousands of hours of practice and the financial precarity that forces her to take a kitchen job at Gorgo’s.