Author: Francesca Noumoff


Publisher: Xlibris


ISBN: 978-1479706075

The end of a person’s life marks the final days or chapters creating a book of triumphs, hardships and realities that many we often remember and some whose lives with be forgotten even before they take their final breath. As one woman lives out her final moments within the confines of a small white cell or room in an old aged home, her thoughts drift back to where her life was filled with music, elegance, the cruelty of the times, the confinement in two prisons, the sadness growing up in the shadow of her sister.

A camera snaps your face and an artist can paint your portrait in many different stages of your life. As the camera takes your image and the artist within the canvas each seeing the subject in a different light. Elonora lived her life under the rule of a father whose only goal was to rule his family like the Czar ruled Russia. Hard, cold, concerned about living the life of an aristocrat, gambling, devoid of emotional attachments her father spent his life living apart from those he was supposed to love and protect.

Her mother whose beauty far surpassed that of others was a dominant figure whose presence evoked violence, fear and whose intelligence was equal or surpassed that of her husband in politics, books and religion. But, Elonora was not the love of her parent’s life it was Elena. Born to run rings around them, devoid of any religious belief as she grew up, played games and loved literature, philosophy, poets and surrounding herself with men felt superior to her education but less cunning.

Elena was cruel, violent and died alone. But, she is not who this is about it Elonora whose appearance would not be one that would be called remarkable or beautiful but whose love or the violin and her feelings for it envelop her into a special world that only she knew.  Elonora just wanted to escape the life she was born into and as she grew and started realized that her talent was great she performed many concerts. The Music oh, The Music: Listen can you hear the strings of her violin playing can you feel the love as she flies, soars and feels liberated within the sound of the music she played.

Living within the harsh walls of this confined cell we learn more about her life, those whose lives she recalls and we hear the voice of a faceless narrator who shares her story and reminds us of the fate of so many who spent their lives in meaningful ways and whose family’s, loved ones and friends have forgotten them leaving them to roam the halls of this poorhouse for those that are left behind. Each encounter she relates each person that she shares with us has a life that was once filled with love, music but ended in tragedy and each with their own tragic flaw.  Elonora takes us back once again to Vienna and we learn more about her past as the walls of her own private penitentiary confine her body but not her mind as she tells the story of the ugly sister, meaning her and hears the voice of Elena within her dreams, visions and thoughts saying: “You and your violin, you were almost godlike, and look at you now.” 

We meet some of the faceless living the same life with her in this cold and stark home. Some remind readers of bats or night visitors she relates others once lived to make men happy, some ordinary doormen, a geisha and some just looking for a place in the world and for something that would make sense. Then, she met the one man who would take her away from her life, who would define her in some ways and would help her to become Elonora. But, the author shares reminders of the war, Dachau, Buchenwald and the atrocities of the times that so many still deny. The man outstand her cell faceless yet whose music once filled the concert halls of Europe and whose genius was remarkable at age 8. But, like everyone else she describes he played his own sonatas, his own sound and the final result as we learn is quite tragic as he leaves the world his music but he becomes someone who finds his place within the streets destroyed by his childhood and more.

Told so eloquently, vividly in the voice of the narrator, the visions that visit her and by Elonora author Francesca Noumoff takes us into a world that most even today forget exists: the world of the forgotten within the confines of the homes that even those working there would like to forget.   This is one powerful novel and one must read for everyone to understand that life takes us in many directions, memories haunt the living and the life of this musician, wife, sister and much more unravels right in front of the reader in so many different ways that the portrait painted or the camera’s lens will reveal the images that only you, the reader can interpret in your own mind after you read the book, close your eyes, see the visions, and hear the music.

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