The Cellist by Jennifer Atkins

Review by Jess Moody

Is a relationship a performance? If so, for whose gaze, and when does the performance end…or begin?

In Jennifer Atkin’s debut, professional cellist Luc recalls her past (and first) relationship with Billy, now a world-renowned sculptor. At the start, Billy fits his art around work for a removal company, while living with his parents. Luc, meanwhile, is fairly established in the music world, and on the cusp of recognition as a talented

soloist. The Cellist traces not only the story of their intimacy over the years, but also the building of their respective identities as artists.

This history often defies a singular truth or narrative. Even the question of when the liaison ‘started’, – the moment, the location, the conversation – is offered as debatable: our first clue that Atkins is open to playing with multiple meanings. This is a novel that examines interpretation as a specific act of power. What better place to do so than in the world of music? Luc’s success as a soloist lies in her ability to take a piece of music – often well known – and play it in a way that creates a new certainty. Attuned as she is to remaking meaning, Luc bristles – unable always to speak back – when she is interpreted by others in ways that do not feel true to her: a peer critiques  her performance as ‘too intimate’; Billy’s recreates her body in sculpture; the wider world imposes their own terms (‘stage fright’; ‘breakdown’) to her crisis during an infamous performance.

Atkins likes to plant these tensions, and to challenge the reader’s assumptions too, offering little variations and new notes just when the relationship, or Luc’s motivations, might start feeling a little predictable.

Take jealousy for example. A simple narrative to explain the breakdown of a relationship. A lover, jealous of the time, attention, and emotion given elsewhere: here, to Luc’s career, embodied by the cello itself. Such a reading is encouraged. When Billy moves in, Luc sees his possessions as taking up the cello’s place, and promptly returns priority to her instrument. When vulnerable, she calls for the cello to lie beneath her bed, an intimate and necessary proximity.  Yet Atkins also subverts the simplicity of this cello-as-lover imagery, even as she presents it explicitly as an image:

‘…he told me…I played my cello like I was fucking it….I looked up definitions of the word erotic and found it came in many guises, like focus, or dedication, and it was not always beautiful, or romantic, to make something’ [Ma1] 

For Luc, the cello isn’t another ‘thing’ in competition with Billy. It’s part of her – or part of who she wants to be. She in turn describes it as her ‘voice’, as a ‘continuous’ part of her body, and a place of understanding. 

The Cellist is an immersive portrait of an intriguing character; an ode to the complex creation of an artist. Longer reminisces sit beside shorter glimpses of present-day realisation, Luc’s thoughts coming in passages of varying lengths, dropped like fragments of melody on a stave. Atkins takes care to provide enough narrative threads – some different movements – to add pace and some external challenge to an otherwise potentially insular story. So, a crisis during a public performance acts as a major pivot in Luc’s relationship and career; then a sudden loss for Billy leads to a relocation to Spain, and a new stage for the pair’s ‘joint enterprise’[Ma2] . Luc’s overlapping projects, partnerships, and parental conversations also provide moments of relief from the central pairing. They allow us to watch how Luc’s many demands to perform for others – officially and unofficially – bleed into each other.

Luc’s tale ultimately circles back round again to the sweltering urban closeness which brought her and Billy together: a London of overheated galleries and drinks on pavements, the cello’s notes reaching through open bedroom windows to the top deck of the bus stopped outside. Mood and setting is something Aktins does very well. The smell of Billy’s studio, the panic of being lost in a strange town, the shock of Luc in her silk evening gown standing in the morning crowds in Milan…. and [Ma3] the music, is  of course, everywhere.

The writer who wants to centre music in their fiction has tricky decisions to make and work to do, especially in a first person narrative. There will be specific pieces or artists to reference, which may need contextualising. Technical knowledge or specificities mustn’t lead to an overly didactic tone. And then there is the option of what the music means to the characters: their intellectual, sensory and emotional responses (‘a full inhabiting’[Ma4] ).  Atkins manages to strike the right balance. Luc’s precise focus and voice naturally lends itself to professional reflection, the narrative structure allows for personal reminiscences of inspiration and awe, and, where needed, Billy pops in as a helpful expository audience.

Music is both the soundtrack and the substance of The Cellist, showing up this couple’s unique discords and harmonies. Theirs is not a typical ‘romance’, but a partnership of sex, subtle manipulation, and strange performances. There is little laughter or ease, and always a sense that Billy is a character that Luc herself cannot fully see.

Luc’s story is one of finding certainty: choosing one interpretation which is hers to master. Atkins demonstrates a surety of style, and steady hand in looking at an artist’s search for precision of self: one perfect note of clarity to reach, and hold. We might stand and applaud, but perhaps, with this one, we should ask the cellist – when she looks out, what version of her does she want us to see?

‘The music stays in the hard places it chooses’  [Ma5] 

The Cellist published by Peninsula Press in July 2022