New York Times Six months after Beethoven contemplated suicide, confessing his despair over his increasing deafness in the 1802 document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, he was carousing in taverns with a charismatic new comrade, George Polgreen Bridgetower. This...
Lit Hub I met Beethoven at an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was looking for patrons for his orchestra. I needed a muse. I was working on my first novel, The Woman in the Moonlight, about the deaf composer’s volatile love affair with...
Town & Country By Norman Vanamee The author and journalist Patricia Morrisroe decided on the subject of her new novel, The Woman in the Moonlight, while having lunch with an editor. “He mentioned that Beethoven had been in love with one of his piano students. I...
New York Times Four years ago, I was having lunch with an editor who mentioned that Beethoven had fallen in love with one of his piano students. She was the woman to whom the great master had dedicated the “Moonlight” Sonata. The editor thought it would make a good...
New York Times Have you ever been jealous … of a GPS? To celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary, Patricia Morrisroe and her husband traveled to England. While driving through the idyllic English countryside, Ms. Morrisroe found herself in unwanted competition with...
Departures The French designer created the most commanding silhouette of 20th-century fashion. Now the house where he found inspiration and respite has been masterfully refreshed and restored. Handsome young men in straw hats and pristine aprons are tending Christian...
9 ½ Narrow is an utterly charming — I might say fleet-footed — memoir about entering life with big (but narrow!) feet and bigger dreams. Patricia Morrisroe depicts the agonies of growing up as a born sophisticate in a Catholic family and a small town with an enviable lightness of touch — and a comic’s sense of timing. It is hard to read this book without laughing — or occasionally grimacing — in recognition at the truth of an observation or situation, leaving you wondering how someone else has… Read more
