'The Time of Our Singing' by Richard Powers

25 September 2026

I am grateful to Gareth Coles for giving me a copy of Richard Powers' 2002 novel, 'The Time of Our Singing'. I had previously enjoyed reading 'Playground' by Richard Powers (reviewed here in January 2026) - a novel that relied on a single brilliant twist. 'The Time of Our Singing' is a much more complete work - an epic family saga of more than 600 pages, covering more than half a century. The story follows the three children of mixed-race parents who aspire to raise them beyond the constraints of time and identity, immersing them in a world of classical music. But the realities of the outside world make it increasingly difficult to live without picking sides, particularly as the civil rights movement begins to respond the a rising epidemic of racial violence across the USA in the decades following World War II. At times it reminded me of Peter Flannery's 'Our Friend in the North' with the main characters (here three siblings rather than four friends) moving apart and then reuniting over several decades, to a background of real world news events. It is incredibly densely written: I often had to read a sentence several times to fully understand its various allusions. Powers treats the reader as an equal (and equally up to speed with classical music, physics, the civil rights movement etc), never patronisingly explaining. I realised I was probably missing much of the rich detail but I don't think that mattered too much. Powers' writing about classical music is incredibly detailed, precise and accurate (as far as I could tell: I definitely didn't get all the references). The book also deals with physics, time and relativity - both practically and metaphorically. It's a huge undertaking but the family saga at its heart is a powerful emotional hook and I was desperate to learn the fates of the various family members. Although the main narrative of the siblings' lives is told linearly (by the younger brother, Joseph), the other chapters jump backwards and forwards in time, filling in the story of their parents, grandparents and more. And, in common with the theme of time as non-linear, this pleasingly gives the sense that all these lives are going on simultaneously. Long lost, much missed characters live on in their own time strands right through the novel. Like any family saga there are, necessarily, many passings and the tale is often sad (and at times quite harrowing). But the complex mix of ideas, emotions, characters and history is brilliantly constructed and a compelling read.