The Speech of Angels

Sharon Maas

Harper Collins

Otago Daily Times, June 26th 2004

Music first enters Jhyoti’s soul a lifetime and a world away from the international stardom to which it eventually leads her.  The  daughter of poor Indian parents, she and her mother are delivering washing to a wealthy family when it first touches her, in the song of a sitar. “She heard a sound, a sweet sound, sweeter even than the water’s voice; barely perceptible yet strong, insistent, reminding her of something but she knew not what, calling her somewhere but she knew not where…If you could turn a soul welling with wonder into a sound, it would surely be this…” It is music that defines her and sustains her through a series of events that tear her world apart.

When her mother is hit and killed on a Bombay street, Jyoti might have become another anonymous victim of poverty and loss but for the attention of Marcia and Jack, wealthy Westerners  on a philanthropic visit to India.   A musician himself,  Jack recognises a fellow traveller and uses music to coax her from the depths of her grief and to guide her re-engagement with the world.  She moves to Germany  as the couple’s adopted daughter, where she is introduced to the violin and, pushed by Marcia, becomes a child prodigy.  Marcia’s death plunges her back into emotional isolation and she abandons her instrument, which she played for Marcia’s sake rather than her her own.  This time healing comes during a trip back to India, where she learns to use music as an essential force in her life rather than a passive response to it.  And so it is that the shy, insecure Jhyoti Keller becomes superstar violinist and prima-donna Jade. Sophisticated and elegant as Jade may seem however, she is a mask behind which the shadow of Jhyoti hides, and returning again to her native India she is confronted with reality of her physical and emotional roots.

This is the story of The Speech of Angels by Sharon Maas, a wonderfully satisfying novel.  The India of Jhyoti’s childhood is almost tangible in the early part of the book, and Jhyoti/Jade’s voice is so convincing that I found myself angry at Maas when Jade appears.  Her superficiality  and selfishness left me wanting back the Jhyoti with whom I had developed an emotional attachment- capturing in form the nature of character she has become.  Lyrical and evocative, Maas’ writing is a pleasure to read, and hers is a name I will certainly look for again.