Written by Nancy Moser
Mozart’s Sister is a historical novel based on the life of Nannerl Mozart. The oft-forgotten sister of Wolfgang Mozart, she was also highly talented. In their childhoods they toured Europe together, the Wunderkinder (Wonder Children). Nannerl was older by five years and, in the early years, often received top billing over her brother. But when she reached marriageable age, her parents ended her musical career. She stayed at home while her father, and then her mother, traveled Europe with Wolfgang, seeking his fortune.
This is the true story Mozart’s Sister is based on. The major events of the book are taken from history, but the reasons for some of them can only be guessed at by historians, and so only guessed at by Nancy Moser. No one is sure, for example, why Nannerl’s son was left with her father during his babyhood.
Moser sets her story in the second half of the eighteenth century – really sets it. The facts of the era are put there for the reader, neither obviously nor confusingly. Little details are particularly effective at bringing the reader into the time. After going from France to England, for instance, the Mozart family buys new clothes, because their French attire stirred up war-driven prejudice against them.
I don’t often read historical novels, but I enjoyed this one. It was engagingly written in the first person and brought me straight into Nannerl’s life and heart. Her struggle with pride, limitations, dreams, disappointments – in a word, her struggle with life – is a universal story, transcending individual circumstances. There is satisfaction in our realizing – and even more in her realizing – that she had accomplishments to be proud of, different as they were from her brother’s. I hope that the real Nannerl Mozart knew what the Nannerl of this book learned – that God had something for her, too.
I,too enjoyed this book. I have “Just Jane” to read next.
Blessings!