Trigger warnings: World War Two

6/10, looking back at this I can say that I won't be reading from this author again since his first book This is My Song kind of underwhelmed me and I was hoping that his next book Harmony would be better than that but it turned out to be just as tedious to read since both books suffer from the same issues, where do I even begin... It starts with the first of three main characters Rafael Ullmann or Rafael for short and he lives during World War Two when he is sent away to a concentration camp where he spends part of the book there. This is by far the best part of the book since it's the most action packed however it just goes on a downward spiral form this point onwards. The book then cuts to the next main character Annie Ulfmann and she lives in the 1970s 30 years after Rafael and she just lives a life all alone in Canada and it appears that her main hobby is birdwatching which was nice to see since this is the only character I know of that does that. I'm not sure if that's really necessary though since it doesn't add much to the story and it's just filler but anyway now I get to see the last part of the book with the final main character Joe Hawker and all he did was discover a song his grandfather wrote and that was it. This ends it underwhelmingly, what a shame. ( )

Some stories are irrevocable, immutable; needing to be told again and again. Such is Richard Yaxley's tripartite novel, This is my song, a story that grows out of the Holocaust, spreads its ripples across place and time.
Sometime after World War II Rafael Ullmann writes to a son or daughter unspecified about the time before; of a family sullied not only by an impractical father who loves the German poet Rilke but by history. The Ullmanns are Jewish. In the 1940s, the Nazis send them from Prague to a ghetto called Terazin and ultimately to Auschwitz. Only Rafael—inmate number B4198, a once upon a time musician—survives. In the 1970s, Annie, the daughter, we think, of Rafael Ullmann, lives in a Canadian cabin with her father and mother. In Annie's mind, there is no time before her birth for any of the family for she knows nothing of their past. Ultimately, she flees her isolation and becomes—marriage failed—single mother to Joe Hawker. We meet them both in Brisbane about three decades later. Joe is a "freak", isolated in a school, someone who values only his music teacher and his chances to sing… When Rafael dies in an old person's home in Brisbane, an unperformed song comes to light.
Yaxley's lyrical account compellingly connects a reader with the awful consequences of tyranny. Musical motifs tie the three parts together, an arpeggio of sax, secret phonographs and semi quavers; segueing through a dirge that notes the consequences of unspeakable horror. At times, you want truths to become more evident to the story's players, for Rafael to sit his errant 1970s daughter down so that he can reveal his hell (would she have fled then?), for the discovery by Annie and Joe of Rafael's post WW2 tale, along with that song of birds and freedom… These comfortable connections are not made, and that of course is the point of horror; that it has too often chiefly silent witnesses.
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This is my Song - How the Holocaust effects three generations across Poland, Canada and finally Australia. Told in three parts.
First is the life of Rafael who is first sent to ghettos in Poland when the Nazi's occupy and then eventually to Auschwitz where he survives because he knows how to play the saxophone, and plays for all the Nazi events. This is the most gripping part of the book as it looks at atrocities, injustices and what someone will do to survive.
Next part is Annie's life in the 1970s in the wild prairies of Canada where her father Rafael has fled with his deaf wife to escape the torments of war and music is banned. Finally the story ends in Australia where Annie's son Joe learns things about his mother and the truth about Rafael's part life in the concentration camp, after his grandfather's death.
Inspired by the author's visit to a Prague Synagogue this book tells the story of Jewish heritage, of caving in and/or surviving and of legacies past on. Well written but a bit too much airy-fairy detail with the hawk and the music lost this reader mid-way. ( )