Partita: When Art Helps Us Love Our Lives
A review of Barbara Kingsolver’s Partita: a novel of rural Appalachia, art, and why it matters.
It’s been such a long time since a fictional story grabbed me with such force and made it impossible for me to leave its world. I started reading Partita last Sunday, and since then, it has felt as if I’m walking through a farm in rural Tennessee or I’m a music student in Indiana, losing myself in my piano, in my first love. I don’t think the story is trying to be atmospheric, yet I feel every scene as if I am inside of it. I feel everything these characters feel. I understand them.
The American South and rural Appalachia have always interested me, for reasons that are partly distinct and partly shared. There are parts of them I judge, parts I want to learn about and understand, and parts I am perhaps drawn to because the way of life feels so different from my own. Barbara Kingsolver, gives you a glimpse of that life, with all the nuance and complexity it deserves. She shows you the lack of resources and neglect, as well as the narrow-mindedness, while also showing how hardworking its people can be and how tight-knit the community can be. There is no judgment or romanticizing. The good and the bad are simply there for you to see.
If there is one thing romanticized in this book, it is art. I used to think that appreciating art was impossible if you were in poverty —that it was a luxury, and that pursuing it would make you an unreasonable person. I blame my understanding of Maslow for that. I don’t know whether he really suggested it or whether I was exposed to a skewed version of it growing up, but I am ashamed to say that I changed my mind only very recently.
You’ll see in Livia’s life, and in Mickie’s and their students’ lives, that art matters. It may not take you places or help you make a living, but it can help you live and love your life better.
In the acknowledgments, Barbara Kingsolver credits her music education with shaping her writing and explains how the two go hand in hand. I haven’t the slightest idea, but given how exquisite her writing is, it must be true, right?