“Only That”: a review of Christine Fischer Guy’s The Instrument Must Not Matter by Catherine Parnell
The Instrument Must Not Matter
by Christine Fischer Guy
Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd (May 2026)
250 pages
In the coming-of-age music-driven novel The Instrument Must Not Matter by Christine Fischer Guy, young classical pianist Lila Rys moves to New York City to study and finds herself moving between the classical music world and a liaison with female pianist that upends her studies. Lily’s synesthesia not only colors the notes she plays but every one of her experiences, even when watching Bachelor contestants on TV: “women are squealing in F-sharp magenta jags that are an ice pick in her brain.” Lila’s brother Lucas understands and responds to his sister’s neurodivergence, providing balance in new territory, for he, too, has moved to NYC and the two of them share a relative’s apartment. He follows a different academic path as he attempts to uncover their grandmother’s story, a musician who refused to play Soviet music after Prague Spring in 1968, when Soviet tanks rolled into the city. Babi/Julianna unlocked Lily early in life through music, and the connection between the grandmother and granddaughter is Bach-driven deep.
In NYC, Lucas soars academically while Lila has a contentious relationship with Professor Vrubel, her piano teacher, who throws shade on her practice after practice. Imperious, but truthful, he warns her: “…press coverage means little on its own if you can’t consistently deliver great performances…I have assumed you’re here because you want to develop yourself artistically. If it’s instant fame you’re after, I invite you to do everything your agent tells you to do.” Sage advice that Lila can’t quite accept until she hears him play Bach (Bach, again!) – and then, she feels the tsunami of what she thinks is Bach but does not know is Vrubel’s experience and wisdom. It’s also the watery echo of interpretable obstinacy, but to say more would give away the plot. It’s enough to know what Vrubel tells Lila. “Don’t hide in the music. Show your true self.”
Toronto author Christine Fischer Guy doesn’t miss a beat in this novel as she navigates questions of identity in a world that threatens to imprison anyone who follows an unconventional path or bucks a political system. As Galway Kinnell wrote in “Prayer,” “Whatever/what is is is what/I want. Only that.” The trouble is, what does Lila want? More to the point, who can give it to her, if not herself? And what did Babi really do and will Lucas uncover it?
The novel moves from Lila and Lucas from NYC to their musician grandmother in Czechoslovakia. With Lucas researching the grandmother’s role in Prague Spring, Lila must decide what to do about her musical career. Of course the siblings and their objectives bang up against one another, and in Christine Fischer Guy’s hands, the prose’s pace and tone is concert-worthy and epiphanic. Exquisite notes emerge as if deciphered from samizdat, and music reveals the novel’s emotional truth. Doesn’t it always, in the space between the notes?
Catherine Parnell is a writer, editor, educator, and the Director of Publicity for Arrowsmith Press. She is co-founder of MicroLit and serves on the board of Wrath-Bearing Tree. Her publications include the memoir The Kingdom of His Will, as well as stories, essays, and reviews and interviews in The Compulsive Reader, Reckon Review, Five on the Fifth, LEON Literary Review, Cutleaf, Funicular, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, Mud Season Review, Emerge, Orca, West Trade Review, Tenderly, Cleaver, Free State Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The Southampton Review, The Baltimore Review, and other literary magazines.