Hoffman introduces us to Isabel Merton, a talented New York pianist, who embarks on one of those tours of Europe's capital cities where she stays in good hotels, meets a lot of people who mean little to her and now and then a friend, but which actually condemns her to loneliness. Fame is only glamorous to those who don't have it.

Isabel's passion for the music she performs draws the listener in, but through Hoffman's wonderfully descriptive prose also the reader. Without wanting to one can feel that passion and then recall one's own responses to someone's performance of a particular Chopin piece, or Schumann or Ravel, each asking something different of performer and listener.

It is quite clear that Hoffman's knowledge about music is above average. Describing Isabel on page one, she writes, " . . . she's filled with a force of expressive meaning, a power of significant sound that enlarges the space within her to an immeasurable degree . . . She is trailing a comet's tail of music, a repertory of beauty and shaped feeling and strenuous human effort."

There is something very apt in this description because artists pass through cities like comets in the sky, there one moment and gone again, perhaps to make a repeat appearance years later. As for human effort, composing is strenuous as is the art of performing the music. Through Merton we get to know the constant need for practice, for concentration needed to keep each note not only in the brain but also subconsciously embedded into the performer's fingertips.

On her flight to Paris she meets an American diplomat, a minor figure in the book, but a major role player in that he is responsible for Isabel meeting the second person in the book who is engulfed in passion. We meet this man first in a series of staccato stream of consciousness responses to Isabel's performance that Hoffman employs to describes what goes on in the minds of audience members. " . . . who is she, thinks Anzor Islikhanov, Row N, Seat 6, those chords, the harmonies / why does she speak as if to me, it enters, the music, the melancholy / who is she, beautiful woman, no, no, not for you / she would disdain me, they all do, I see it, their condescension, their tight-lipped smiles / let me let me not forget! / mad Chechen mad country, I see it in their eyes / ah, but look, her hair over her face, the quickening the rush, from her fingers, like wild mountain streams oh God yes the cold streams, my country / it pierces she pierces / my country, destroyed, the bastards the thugs / I hate them it grows in me it will burn me, let it burn! / Chopin knew, hated the Russians the tyrants the thugs / ah, listen, that line chromatic into the distance, from a distance, transporting, she transports me . . . ah, those chords, rising, swelling, the fierceness yes like Chechnya, my longing, Chopin's longing, beauty and violence all combined . . . "

These thoughts perfectly describe Anzor, and we recognize immediately what he is and what he stands for. He is the kind of person who thrives on real and imagined grievances that lead to a circular dance of revenge. Thanks to Hoffman's skillful writing, Isabel remains innocent of such recognition until much later in the book.

As an apparent representative of the Chechens to the European Union Anzor makes sure the American diplomat introduces him to Isabel. Then as he seemingly follows her from city to city, she falls in love with Anzor and his passion for his country as well as the passion they share physically. Isabel is drawn into Anzor's world, perhaps fascinated by his depth of feeling, their uncommitted love-making, his seeming charm. She ignores warnings from a friend, and Hoffman let's Isabel's ex-husband Peter, a rational law professor, voice what may lie behind it all, "The thing about fanatics is that they have charisma."

An explosion in the lobby of a hall where she is performing finally makes Isabel realize that her affair and Anzor's activities have gone beyond the limit of what she can tolerate. The trauma of this event will lead her into a new endeavor, but not before she withdraws from the world she knew until then. Hoffman's elegant novel leads her protagonist towards a new creative hope that speaks of the healing power that art has when properly applied.