Ecstasy: A Novel

by Mary Sharratt Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Overview

Gustav Klimt gave Alma her first kiss. Gustav Mahler fell in love with her at first sight and proposed only a few weeks later. Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius abandoned all reason to pursue her. Poet and novelist Franz Werfel described her as one of the very few magical women that exist. But who was this woman who brought these eminent men to their knees? In Ecstasy, Mary Sharratt answers that question. Coming of age in the midst of a creative and cultural whirlwind, Alma Schindler yearned to make her mark as a composer. A brand-new era of possibility for women was dawning, and she was determined to make the most of it. But when Alma lost her heart to the great composer Gustav Mahler, he demanded that she give up music. Torn by her love and in awe of his genius, she had to discover how to remain true to herself and her artistic passion. Part cautionary tale and part triumph of the feminist spirit, Ecstasy reveals the true Alma Mahler: composer, author, daughter, sister, mother, wife, lover, and muse.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/26/2018
Both during her life and after, Viennese artist Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879-1964) received countless love letters; Sharratt’s passionate and occasionally overwrought novel is another, one notable for its focus on Alma’s artistic talent and early feminism as well as her beauty. Sharratt (The Dark Lady’s Mask) specializes in dramatizing the lives of women underestimated or overlooked by history, and, though Alma may not seem to fit that model, Sharratt shows her as trapped by a sexist and hypocritical society in which only men were allowed to be artists or have sexual freedom. In Sharratt’s account, Alma grows from a musical girl awakened by a kiss from the artist Gustav Klimt to the young woman astonished by professions of love from Gustav Mahler, nearly 20 years her senior and perhaps the most famous musician in music-obsessed Vienna. The novel continues on to Alma’s growing resentment at having to tailor her life to Mahler’s demands. Despite occasional overwriting (in response to one of Mahler’s declarations of love, “a light blazed inside her, her heart beating like the wings of a thousand white doves”), this winning historical novel offers an enjoyable portrait of an ambitious woman whose struggles are as relevant today as they were a century ago. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

Named a "Must-Read" book by The New York Post "Mary Sharratt has made an impressive career fleshing out the lives of women rendered one-dimensional in the pages of history...With this fine work, [Sharratt] has us wanting more."—Minneapolis Star Tribune "Alma Mahler is certainly worthy of joining the remarkable women about whom Sharratt has previously written."—St. Paul Pioneer Press “This winning historical novel offers an enjoyable portrait of an ambitious woman whose struggles are as relevant today as they were a century ago.”—Publishers Weekly “[Sharratt] has in-depth knowledge of classical music and turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna…Recommended for readers who like the peaks and valleys of nonstop drama.”—Library Journal   “Thought-provoking [and]…bracing.”—Kirkus "A novel with surefire appeal for fans of romantic women’s fiction."—Booklist “Terrific…An intimate, absorbing portrait of a complicated woman whose talents and passions propelled her to the center of fin de siècle Vienna.” —Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train and A Piece of the World “In Ecstasy, Mary Sharratt plunges the reader into the tumultuous and glamorous fin de siècle era, bringing to life its brilliant and beguiling leading lady. Finally, Alma Mahler takes center stage, surging to life as so much more than simply the female companion to the brilliant and famous men who loved her. Sharratt's portrait is poignant and nuanced, her novel brimming with rich historic detail and lush, evocative language.” —Allison Pataki, New York Times best-selling author of The Accidental Empress "Sharratt has composed a passionate symphony for Alma Mahler, a woman who was more than a muse to the greats. She was also a talent in her own right, stifled by society and the passions of the many men who pursued her. This heartfelt, feminist tribute makes for a compelling and sophisticated tale!" —Stephanie Dray, New York Times best-selling author of America's First Daughter “Evocative and passionate, Ecstasy illuminates through its tempestuous and talented heroine a conundrum that resonates across the centuries: how a woman can fulfill her destiny by being both a lover and an artist.” —Jenna Blum, New York Times best-selling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers “A tender, intimate exploration of a complicated woman, Mary Sharratt’s Ecstasy renders in exquisitely researched detail and fiercely imagined scenes the life of Alma Mahler — daughter, wife, mother, lover, and composer — and the early 20th Century Vienna and New York in which she came of age. I loved this inspiring story of an early feminist standing up for her art.” —Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times best-selling author of The Race for Paris “Alma Mahler’s unexpected, often heartbreaking journey from muse to independence comes to vivid, dramatic life. Sharratt skillfully evokes turn-of-the-century Vienna and the musical genius of the era, returning Alma to her rightful place in history as both the inspiration to the men in her life and a gifted artist in her own right.” —C.W. Gortner, best-selling auth —

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Tavia Gilbert showcases her vocal talents by mastering a wealth of character accents and flawlessly speaking actual German as well as by singing the musical passages in this production. In the artistic world of fin-de-siècle Vienna, beautiful and creative Anna Schindler longs to become a renowned composer even more than she longs for love. When famed composer Gustav Mahler proposes, she gives up her music for his heart, losing herself bit by bit. This wonderful production is slightly marred by sloppy editing. Overall, Gilbert captures Anna’s despair at her two miscarriages and the loss of her oldest daughter, as well as her growing anxiety and depression over the loss of her individuality. A.L.S.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-01-23
The early years of thwarted artist Alma Mahler, a still-controversial woman.Bourgeois bohemian dilettante? Genius foiled by early-20th-century gender bias and bad romantic decisions? These historical appraisals receive equal airing in Sharratt's (The Dark Lady's Mask, 2016, etc.) thought-provoking novel, which takes Alma, nee Schindler, from age 19 to 31. Beautiful and musically gifted, Alma is viewed by her mother and stepfather as ripe for the marriage market: they refuse to allow her to enter a conservatory and only grudgingly agree to her taking counterpoint lessons from composer Alex von Zemlinsky. The two fall in love, appearing to be true soul mates, but her parents won't allow her to marry a Jew. They reverse this position when Alma, at 22, transfers her infatuation to the much older and more successful Jewish composer Gustav Mahler, director of the Viennese Court Opera. Although Mahler's proposal comes with the condition that Alma forego composing, she marries him anyway. Over the years, as Alma gives birth to two daughters, the marriage founders. Alma regrets the loss of her own creative soul, and Mahler grows increasingly obsessed with work, treating her more as hausfrau than muse. Vienna's entrenched anti-Semitism drives the couple to New York, where Mahler escapes European critical ridicule to enjoy acclaim and riches, first as principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and then of the newly reorganized New York Philharmonic. Their eldest child's death from diphtheria and Alma's subsequent miscarriages further strain the relationship, particularly since Mahler seems to blame Alma for these tragedies. Crises mount as Alma takes a rest cure for a nervous breakdown and Mahler is diagnosed with a heart condition. At the sanatorium, Alma meets 27-year-old architect Walter Gropius, and once more she confuses her desire for self-realization with other desires. Sharratt is adept at presenting the internal conflicts that dog her protagonist, with the close third-person narration capturing her often skewed perspective. The known biographical facts suggest that Alma could never reconcile her ambitions with her era's constraints on women. In Sharratt's bracing portrayal, though, Alma's limits seem largely self-imposed.Readers will enjoy forming their own opinions on who was really the victim here.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175702294
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Here is where my awakening shall occur, Alma told herself. In magical Venice, in the spring of the year and the spring of her life. Never mind that it was pouring rain and fog hung as thickly as wool.

In the hotel salon, she played piano, accompanying her mother who sang lieder to entertain their fellow tourists sheltering from the miserable weather. How beautiful was her mother’s soprano, how flawless her diction. Mama had been an opera singer before she married Alma’s father, now almost seven years dead.

At the song’s close came a burst of applause. Alma beamed at her audience. Sitting among the English and German tourists were Gretl; their stepfather, Carl; and his colleague Gustav Klimt, who seemed to regard Alma with amused speculation. For Easter, Herr Klimt had given her a silly card of a shepherdess encircled by adoring sheep sporting gentlemen’s hats—Alma kept it tucked in her journal.

He is so handsome, she thought, heat rising in her face. With his powerful body, his curly hair and beard, he reminded her of the figures on ancient Greek vases. If Gustav Klimt had even the faintest clue how infatuated she was, she would die. Thirty-seven years old, the most celebrated painter in all Vienna, he could marry a countess just by snapping his fingers.

Nonetheless, Alma made herself stare right back at him to prove she wasn’t some giddy girl he could disarm with a smile.

Her stepfather was so fond of Klimt, he had all but begged him to join them on their journey through Italy even though Klimt swore that he hated foreign travel and was terrible with languages. As a painter, Carl was nowhere near as brilliant as Klimt—or Emil Schindler, whose protégé Carl had been. Klimt and Papa are giants, Alma told herself. But Carl was a lesser talent who hung on to the coattails of the great in hope that some of their glory might rub off on him. It wasn’t that her stepfather was a bad man, but Alma often wondered why Mama seemed to worship him.

Alma set her sights higher. Nothing less than a man of brilliance would do for her, a truly modern man who understood her need to continue composing even after she was married. She wasn’t one, like her sister, to settle for the very first suitor. Gretl was engaged to the tedious Wilhelm Legler, a painter of almost numbing mediocrity. No, Alma vowed to wait for the right man, the one whose love would help her unfold to her highest purpose.

Rising from the piano bench, Alma was gathering up her music scores when an elderly English lady approached her.

“Fräulein, you played so beautifully, like a concert pianist,” she said. “Tell me, who was the composer?”

“I am,” Alma replied. She lowered her eyes.

“My daughter composed all eight lieder we performed,” Mama added, with warmth and pride.

The English lady seemed most impressed. She grasped Alma’s hands. “Keep on composing, won’t you, dear? Show the men that we women can achieve something.”

Alma found herself flushing and speechless, seized with both a bottomless joy and an ambition that left her breathless. Many a girl showed talent and promise only to give it up for marriage, as Mama had done when she was only twenty-one and pregnant—out of wedlock!—with Alma. But wasn’t a new age dawning, all the rules for art, music, and society changing at once?

As the English lady and her companions took their leave, Gretl announced that she was dying for a game of whist, so Mama and Carl sat down with her at the card table. But Alma could think of no pastime more deadening to the intellect and spirit. Mumbling her excuses, she carried her music scores upstairs to the room that she and Gretl were sharing.

Closing the door behind her, Alma sank into an armchair and buried herself in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which Mama considered unseemly for a young girl. But Mama had long given up trying to control what Alma read. You’re so stubborn, her mother was always saying. So boneheaded.

Yet truth be told, Alma was rapidly losing patience with Emma Bovary. She found the character incomprehensible. Her madness, her degrading love affairs, her endless lying to herself and others—was this woman flighty, cowardly, or simply coarse and common?

Tossing the book aside, Alma opened the French doors and stepped out on the balcony to breathe in the fresh, cool air now that the rain had finally let up. The canal below was gray with a shimmer of yellow as the sun broke through gaps in the fog. Gray was her favorite color, the way it so seamlessly merged with other hues. An artist’s daughter, she observed how every raindrop on the balcony rail became a gleaming pearl. The crumbling palazzos across the canal seemed almost rosy. Everything flickered and glowed in dreamy gray light.

Hearing a noise in the room, Alma left the balcony and stepped inside.

“Gretl?” she called. She had left the door unlocked since her sister was always forgetting her key.

Instead, she found Gustav Klimt standing in the middle of her room. Her heart began to pound even as she told herself that he must be looking for Carl and had wandered in here by mistake.

“Alma,” he said. “Are you on your own?”

“Why, yes,” she said, without thinking. “The others are—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Klimt crossed the room in two huge strides. A gasp caught in her throat as he pulled her body against his, kissing her with vehemence and heat, his lips firm and insistent, his beard bristling against her chin. Her first kiss.

What magic was this? It was as though her hidden longing had summoned him straight into her embrace. Time seemed to drop away, everything before or after this single moment diminishing into nothingness as the ecstasy surged inside her, crashing like a wave inside her heart.

Klimt cupped her face to his. “I could see all the passion locked inside you while you were playing the piano. The time has come to set it free.”

She trembled just to gaze into his gray green eyes.

“Love me,” he whispered, running his fingers around her lips.

She tenderly caressed his hair, feeling the thick, springy curls twining around her fingertips. She kissed him with a hunger that left her aching. The soft quivering in her belly and knees was countered by a shooting heat, a rising energy that made her want to dance. But instead of losing herself in her frenzy, she made herself slow down, kissing him with deliberation, savoring each nuance of his lips against hers, her chest against his, their lungs swelling in unison as if sharing the same breath. All the dusty descriptions of love scenes she had read in Madame Bovary and elsewhere seemed meaningless now. This was what passion, what awakening, truly was.

When Klimt asked if he could take out her hairpins, Alma nodded, moved beyond speech. He pulled them out one by one until her brown hair fell over her shoulders like a cloak. As if in holy awe, Klimt drew back and stared.

“How I long to paint you.”

He positioned her before the full-length mirror. His arm around her waist, he stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. When their eyes met in the mirror, he commanded her to look at herself, as though he, the artist, were revealing her own image to her for the very first time. Alma squirmed but couldn’t take her eyes off the mirror, for this was as exciting as it was uncomfortable.

This is what men see when they look at me. Tall, she stood shoulder to shoulder with Klimt. Her face was flushed with yearning, her blue eyes huge, blinking rapidly.

“You are so ripe and voluptuous,” he said, drawing her attention to her waving tresses flowing over her breasts. His hands traced the curve of her hips. Swinging her around to face him again, he stroked her hair.

“Alma,” he said. “My little wife.”

Oh, to marry Klimt.

A sweet ache bloomed inside her as they kissed, his tongue flicking between her teeth. Then she jolted at the sound of Mama’s and Carl’s voices in the adjoining room. Then she jolted at the sound of Mama’s and Carl’s voices in the adjoining room.

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