The Page Turner — David Leavitt

"Why can't people have what they want?" THE PAGE TURNER pivots -- movingly and provocatively around this question. At eighteen, Paul Porterfield's dream is to play the piano at the world's great concert halls, yet so far the closest he has come has been to turn pages for his idol, Richard Kennington, a former piano prodigy on the cusp of middle age. Then, on vacation in Rome with his mother, Paul encounters Kennington a second time. A love affair begins between the two, an affair that affects their lives in ways that neither could have predicted. By turns comic and heartbreaking, shrewd and intimate, THE PAGE TURNER testifies not only to the tenacity of the human spirit but to the resiliency of the human heart.