The Roaring Brook Fiddler: Creative Life on the Wings of an Empath Julie Lyonn Lieberman

330PP ISBN 9781098335496 BOOKBABY $21.95

US violinist and educator Julie Lyonn Lieberman is a force of nature, exemplified by this latest publication. Not a book of music, this time, but a memoir of her creative life with its twists and turns, highs and lows, and candid self-awareness. She writes with her heart on her sleeve, and the resulting publication is a fulfilment of a promise to her mother as she lay dying. There is something compelling about being allowed into Lieberman’s life and mind in this openly emotional and exploratory life story. For a UK reader it can be quite an uncomfortable read at times, and to be fair probably couldn’t have been written by anyone on this side of the pond as, even in this more touchy-feely age, we are more buttoned-up and generally more private about our responses than our American cousins. That is not a criticism but an observation that we react differently to internal turmoil and analysis.

Heart-on-sleeve writing from Julie Lyonn Lieberman

But it isn’t quite as easy to typecast the book in this way, and Lieberman herself has had to conquer anxiety and fear of disclosure to convey her inner world in a lasting document.

She has combined her own story with an unfinished memoir written by her mother to become a seamless whole.