Atmospheric, highly literary ... The mystery plots allow the author to ask deeper, more elusive questions about human existence ... By conflating exceptional artists with fictional detectives and letting us follow along as they unravel mysteries, [Dorfman] help[s] us envision what living in the mind of a genius must be like ... Both entertaining and instructive.
This lovely novel will be particularly meaningful to musicians ... Reads like an 18th-century picaresque, about tragedies but not itself tragic, charming, and somewhat distanced. For all the poverty, illness, loss, and death surrounding him, this Mozart delights the reader with his effusive appreciation of food, drink, women, and music, music above all. Music, he believes with a bone-deep optimism, can change the very shape of the world. I loved viewing that world through his eyes.
Luminous ... entrancing, sumptuous ... Like an expressive background score, the book’s heady passion for music heightens the plot while enlivening the joys and sorrows of each character ... Beyond its compelling intrigue of intertwined creative lives, the historical novel Allegro is about how Mozart yearned for divine inspiration while confronting his own vulnerable mortality.
