I’ve just started the 2014 Giller winner US Conductors by Sean Michaels, but I know I will like it. Despite the musical instrument described in the book seems quite odd and ghostly to me at the beginning, it’s a beautiful and haunting story about music, love, spy, and science – if you have a 9-year-old son who loves science and technology, you can actually share some pages with him.

The book is based on the true story of Lev Termen, the Russian scientist, who invented the theremin player, and his “one true love,” Clara Rockmore. In the first half of the book, we learn of Termen’s early days inventing the theremin, and his arrival in the Jazz age New York. In the second half, the novel builds to a crescendo as Termen’s spy games fall apart and returns to Russia, where he is imprisoned in Siberia and later brought to Moscow to eavesdrop on Stalin. Throughout all this, his unrequited love for Clara remains constant and unflagging.

US Conductors is steeped in beauty, wonder, and looping heartbreak, like a musical piece itself.