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destdest 's review for:
Private Lessons
by Cynthia Salaysay
First, this book describes music/piano playing beautifully. Is this what it is like to be inside a musician’s head? I’m an artist so drawing and animations are always floating through my mind. Whatever the case, I enjoyed these musical tidbits.
Claire’s not a bad character, but she’s too insecure and that bleeds through her narrative in the assumptions she makes about other people and how she feels about herself. She does a little quasi-gatekeeping when her friend gets interested in music because, if Claire’s not the musical friend, then what is her worth? At times, Claire was #TeamTooMuch. She acts like a true teenager, but I didn’t like how poorly she treated her mom. I don’t get why Claire gets a schoolgirl crush on Paul. He’s terribly strict and rarely praises her.
More importantly, this story is very slow-moving. If you’re here for the piano teacher #MeToo story, then it doesn’t even happen within 200 pages. Instead, we are privy to Claire’s life, dealing with her friends, an awkward first love who doesn’t do “labels,” and her mother’s grief. I understand building the setting and character relationships, but there was some filler that could have been cut.
When the #MeToo situation began, the scene was very detailed and uncomfortable and speaks to the power-imbalance between Claire and her teacher.Claire starts out actively trying to entice Paul to seduce her (putting on his old gf’s lipstick, hiking up her dress to her thighs, kissing him multiple times while he was asleep, etc), and, he accepts the advances until he rapes her (he forces her to perform aggressive oral sex on him even when she asks to STOP). Yeah. Paul had no business entertaining her infatuations, and then he acts like a pretentious man-child. He was purely insufferable towards the end. Gaslighter extraordinaire, everybody.
As the story meandered on, I felt less goodwill. On the good note, I liked how Claire called out another character for ghosting her (despite Claire ghosting her own BFF) after such an intimate event. You don’t have to have deeper feelings, but just don’t act like it did not happen.
2.5 stars
Claire’s not a bad character, but she’s too insecure and that bleeds through her narrative in the assumptions she makes about other people and how she feels about herself. She does a little quasi-gatekeeping when her friend gets interested in music because, if Claire’s not the musical friend, then what is her worth? At times, Claire was #TeamTooMuch. She acts like a true teenager, but I didn’t like how poorly she treated her mom.
More importantly, this story is very slow-moving. If you’re here for the piano teacher #MeToo story, then it doesn’t even happen within 200 pages. Instead, we are privy to Claire’s life, dealing with her friends, an awkward first love who doesn’t do “labels,” and her mother’s grief. I understand building the setting and character relationships, but there was some filler that could have been cut.
When the #MeToo situation began, the scene was very detailed and uncomfortable and speaks to the power-imbalance between Claire and her teacher.
As the story meandered on, I felt less goodwill. On the good note, I liked how Claire called out another character for ghosting her (despite Claire ghosting her own BFF) after such an intimate event. You don’t have to have deeper feelings, but just don’t act like it did not happen.
2.5 stars