The novel flows as lyrically through Kaplan’s prose as the wail of the saxophones and crescendos of Gershwin’s keyboards. You can almost hear the taxi horns and clopping hooves of carriage horses in Central Park through his words as you imagine riding down Park Avenue past the towering edifices of lush mansions. As Kay becomes so absorbed in her performing as to be swept away from her audience, I read this book under that same captivation as minutes flowed into hours. Only my noisy team of hungry terriers could break my concentration.
The rarified world Swift inhabited provides rich raw material Kaplan uses to tell a complex and involving story ... In a biography, such luminaries could become footnotes. In Kaplan’s historical novel they turn into essential characters, often-fascinating friends and foils. While the plot about Swift’s divided romantic allegiance drives the book, it also allows Kaplan to examine all manner of interesting social and political complexities of 1920s and ‘30s America ... If Rhapsody has a flaw, it is that Swift gets to have her cake, and eat it, too, for too long ... she lives a life of abject luxury and few real problems ... It’s an interesting life, thankfully, but one lacking deep, plot-driving conflict. A little over halfway into the story, tensions finally heat up and provide more narrative thrust ... Rhapsody never proves less than engaging reading, however. Swift’s dialogue sings especially, capturing both her intellect and wit ... Mitchell James Kaplan’s prose luxuriates in depicting her surprising and wildly artistic world.
Kaplan delicately stitches together the notes of Gershwin and Swift’s nontraditional love song with the constant, glamorous hum of the Roaring Twenties playing in the background. Snappy dialogue and lush prose bring the Jazz Age to life as Kaplan takes readers from Harlem rent parties to the stage lights of Broadway ... Kaplan also uses the historical setting and characters to briefly explore conversations about topics that remain relevant today, particularly antisemitism and the appropriation of Black culture by white people for artistic gain. A sumptuous fictional account of a complex real-life romance, this book will stick in readers’ heads like the melody of a favorite ballad.
Kaplan builds an enchanting world ... Kaplan’s meticulous research is evident throughout, and the pages glitter with the names of such musical luminaries as Richard Rodgers, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller, who provide a glamorous backdrop to the narrative, punctuated with major world events: the Great Depression and the ominous gathering storm of fascism in Germany. This spellbinding and luminous tale will linger in readers’ minds long after the final page is turned.
Abetted by its often omniscient narration and long passages of historical context, the novel seems intent on hewing as closely to nonfiction as possible. The history is engrossing, particularly to students of early Broadway—there’s name-dropping aplenty in this and other cultural and political arenas ... Although Kaplan’s propulsive style imparts a momentum of its own, narrative tension is all but absent—the Warburg marriage is not exactly a hell demanding escape, and Gershwin is not exactly a port in a storm. The many disquisitions, on topics as varied as the underpinnings of American anti-Semitism to the misappropriation of Black culture by well-intentioned Whites, are interesting and important, but they do interrupt the novel’s flow ... The characters’ star turns are upstaged by the vastness of the set.
