Books
Martha’s second novel, Duet For One, is out now!
Duet for One is a lush and rewarding love story that follows the journey from grief to love within the world of classical music.
“[Duet for One] comes together like a seamlessly programmed night at the symphony.”
- Kirkus Reviews
“A thoughtfully crafted and deftly layered novel that offers a nuanced look at encores, and at love.”
- Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature
“In her new novel Duet for One, writer Martha Anne Toll conjures up the emotionally volatile world of chamber music with a combination of wit, empathy, and eroticism that draws the reader in with a firm but gentle hand.”
- Joshua Kosman, former chief classical music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle
“Toll’s lush writing captures what it must feel like to have this kind of transcendent talent. It’s divine. When these characters perform, it’s like they’re leaving the earth entirely and speaking to one another in a secret language only they can hear.”
- Kate Preziosi, Washington Independent Review of Books
“… this novel was a pleasure to read. Though Duet for One deals with intense grief and loss—along with complicated, thorny relationships—there is so much beauty and humanity running these pages that the narrative feels hopeful and redemptive. While we may never bridge the gaps between ourselves and others, we can try, and there is beauty, melody, and harmony in the attempt.”
- Norah Vawter, Washington Unbound
“Toll shows great finesse in the way she describes the actual technical aspects of playing, both the piano and the violin and viola. Especially fascinating is the way she describes how musicians shape sound. Through her words, you experience the effort and control that go into playing music at a high level, relinquishing all other things in order to unravel its mysteries.”
- Marina Harss, dance and opera journalist
“Duet for One is a beautiful meditation on love and the great vessel of time. Begin reading it to be stirred by its symphonic prose, and soon you’ll harmonize and fall in love with its unforgettable characters.”
- Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
“Duet for One is a lovely story about artistry, time, memory, and romance. Martha Anne Toll has a wonderful way of writing about music. It is a balm to the spirit!”
- Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility and The Golden State
“Music—like love—is a challenge to both the senses and the intellectual mind. In this poignant and attentively-written novel, Martha Anne Toll writes about the triumphs and sorrows of these two elements of human life, and considers how they might intertwine. Duet for One unfolds with symphonic sweep, each of its movements revealing deeper layers of emotion and insight into the central characters. The great works--works by Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Paganini, Mozart, Smetana--serve as the backdrop for Toll's clever and intricate storytelling. Truly, a memorable novel.”
- Pauls Toutonghi, author of The Refugee Ocean and Red Weather
Click here to watch the Duet for One book launch at Politics & Prose in Washington, DC
Click to hear Martha discuss Duet for One on Leah Roseman’s podcast Conversations with Musicians
Three Muses is a love story that enthralls; a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet.
“Exquisite.” Washington Post
“Author Martha Anne Toll … weave[s] an intimate portrait of romance and heartbreak …[the]novel is not only notable for its poignant prose, clever foreshadowing, and deeply moving ending, it also comments on many of the harsher truths present in the ballet world, acknowledging the reality without glamorizing it.” NPR
“The wonder of this book lies not just in tracking these stories through two decades toward their inevitable convergence, but also in witnessing how skillfully Toll tends to them…. By the time you finish this, you’ll realize you’re in the hands of a maestro.” Vulture (by New York Magazine)
“An affecting chamber piece with plenty to say about art, trauma, and healing.” Kirkus starred review
“Martha Anne Toll’s beautiful and emotionally resonant first novel won the 2020 Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, and it’s clear why.” “A Fraught Fling, Deep in Meaning,” Lilith Magazine
“With healthy doses of nostalgia and authenticity—and a tear-jerker ending—Three Muses is a deeply honest story that embraces the magic of fiction while not shying away from life’s harsher realities.” POINTE Magazine
“An exquisitely crafted novel…. What makes this story sing is the acute way Toll paints the tension that takes place on stage. Even those who are not connoisseurs of the dance form will be enraptured by Toll’s imagistic language that manages to somersault and twirl in ways that make the dancers’ moves real.” L.A. Parent
“This is a remarkable debut novel … Above all else, it is highly recommended as a first class read.” Critics Circle
“In this beautiful, dark novel, Toll has choreographed the mysterious ways these forces push and pull and shape the lives of her characters – lives of terrible loss and precious if dismaying survival – through their dissonances, harmonies, deprivations, and recoveries. A meditation on history, music, the catastrophic inheritances of the Holocaust, and the so common, painful hiddenness of hope itself, Three Muses captivates the reader from the first page to the last.”
- Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers, Enon, and This Other Eden
“Martha Anne Toll's Three Muses is so surprisingly soulful. The surprise doesn't lie in the existence of textured prose that explores dance, music, love, and time in wholly different ways; it lies in how that textured prose actually creates a new time signature wholly dependent on practice and discipline. This is phenomenal writing. It just is.”
- Kiese Makeba Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and Long Division
Three Muses made The Millions’ Most Anticipated: The Great Second Half of 2022 list