Reading Aja Gabel's "The Ensemble" in Van

I read this book watching the ships moored in Vancouver waters.

Apparently simple, apparently written in a very accessible language, Aja Gabel’s "The Ensemble" works like a perfectly orchestrated mechanism. 
Its structure reminds of a Bach’s fugue, with eight voices (those of four talented members of a string quartet and those of their instruments) entering in conversation in a contrapuntal way.
The main theme is aging, meant as the process of acquiring maturity through life experience and the way this process is reflected in the quartet’s music performance across time.
If at a young age players can technically master a music score it is only after having fought the usual life’s battles that they are able to infuse into their playing the sound of their anguished souls. And that’s when the audience truly responds, recognizing the ancient, never-ending call for communion through the artistic medium. But also acknowledging that some of the freshness and candour of the youth can still be preserved in the – more or less creative – transition into adulthood and – alas! – senility.
That’s the book’s lesson in a nutshell. Saying more than this would mean giving out too much of the novel. Long live the music, the child and the artist within us!