The Piano Lesson by August Wilson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Piano Lesson
Book Review: Great play.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best of August Wilson.
Great dialogue/speeches, intense relationships and characters, sibling rivalry (as metaphor for embracing one's history or using it to build towards something new), and a suspenseful essence. This is a definitive classic for its depth and symbolism. The inexplicable need to excercise a tortured past and move hopefully with the present toward the future.
The Piano Lesson is a vivid experience of the irony that a drunken Wining Boy speaks of upon coming back to his neice Berneice's house: (to paraphrase) at the bar strangers treated me like family and at home my family treats me like stangers.
Very deep and ultimately satisfying.
Book Review: Heirloom and heritage
Summary: 3 Stars
August Wilson's play "The Piano Lesson" won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and is one of several works that have established Wilson as a major figure in the American theater. While there is much that is admirable in the play, I think it is one of those works that probably needs to be seen, rather than read in book form. As a book, I found it an oddly uninvolving read."Lesson" is about the conflict in an African-American family over an heirloom piano, decorated with carvings, that dates back to the slavery era. This may be one of the play's problems as a reader's text: it relies heavily on a visual element which needs the collaboration of a skilled prop master.
Still, "The Piano Lesson" has many elements which make it worthwhile in book form. The playwright brings up such compelling issues as African-American land ownership, economic independence, and family heritage. And much of the dialogue is quite sharp. Give it a try.
Book Review: Ho-Hum
Summary: 2 Stars
I think that this book had the possibility to be an amazing read, but I found it missing some very key parts, especially character development. The ending was also a let-down, it was too easy to see that it was quite shallow and happened without any obvious reason.Book Review: It was good but not his best.
Summary: 3 Stars
I feel he could have added more to the play. If this play was a meal it would be meatloaf and potatoes. See without the gravy and vegetables and maybe even dessert its not a full meal now is it?Book Review: Not bad
Summary: 4 Stars
This play was required reading for my AP Literature class. It was a fun read but my main complaint is the story was not easily read. Several sections seemed lacking in a reading, parts that wouldn't have come out as well until acted out. Wining Boy is a hilarious, wry point of view creating a counterpoint to Boy Willie's and Berniece's stubborn struggle.