SONATA is a poignant memoir that weaves chronic illness and classical music into a raw, inspiring tale of grace and determination. Andrea Avery's coming-of-age story explores a “Janus-head miracle”― her extraordinary talent and even more extraordinary illness ― in a manner reminiscent Brain on Fire and Poster Child.As the goshawk becomes a source of both devotion and frustration for Helen Macdonald in H Is for Hawk, so the piano comes to represent both struggle and salvation for Andrea in this extraordinary debut.

Already a promising and ambitious classical pianist at twelve, Andrea was diagnosed with a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis that threatened not just her musical aspirations but her ability to live a normal life. As Andrea navigates the pain and frustration of coping with RA alongside the usual travails of puberty, college, sex, and just growing-up, she turns to music―specifically Franz Schubert's sonata in B-flat D960, and the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein for strength and inspiration. The heartbreaking story of this mysterious sonata―Schubert’s last, and his most elusive and haunting―is the soundtrack of Andrea's story.

 

Andrea Avery holds an MFA from Arizona State University and teaches English in Phoenix. Her short pieces have been published in Real Simple, Ploughshares, and The Oxford American, among others, and she was a finalist in Glamour magazine’s annual essay contest.

 

“Andrea writes like a clever, cunning, confident angel. She’s a natural, and her realness and grace are lovely to behold.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

“Beautifully written, deeply thought and felt. The interweaving of music and disability works extremely well throughout, and Avery describes life with disability in a moving, engrossing way, and without giving way to any of the punishing tropes that bedevil not only outsider account of disability but even lots of first-person narratives.” — Joseph Straus, Ph.D, Distinguished Professor at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York