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DESCRIPTION:  Hallelujah is the remarkable story of one of the greatest events in musical history, the creation of George Frederic Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah. Composed in just twenty-four days, Handel’s “Grand Oratorio which rendered him immortal” was birthed in the darkest and most desperate hours of his life. His health was failing. Critics ridiculed him. Creditors hounded him. Enemies persecuted him. Pride had nearly destroyed him. Yet, out of Handel’s night emerged the dawn of Messiah. Anyone who has thrilled at hearing the Hallelujah Chorus will feel “profound attachment” to Handel’s story of hope and redemption as timeless and poignant as the music itself.

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SITE RATING:  8/10 SITE REVIEW:  I was leery of tackling a fictional account of the creation of Handel's Messiah - there are so many mawkish or contrived directions in which the story could devolve that I honestly kept my expectations low.  But happily, this lengthy, complex effort by J. Scott Featherstone is full of gritty, honest descriptions of both the times and Handel himself.   The author has some small experience in writing for film and television, but this is his only book, so far as I've been able to discover; but he's extremely talented at imagining a very real sense of time and place, recreating both the callous court politics of the day, as well as the bleakness of life for the poor and destitute.  He describes the internal machinations which pitted King George I against his son, leading to a conspiracy between George II and Handel's librettist Paolo Antonio Rolli during the creation and aftermath of their final opera, Deidamia and the resulting decay of Handel's critical and popular fortunes.  Handel comes to full-blooded life here - his over-sized Saxon temper, and his self-effacing charm and wit on full display - while a complex web of other personalities are fleshed out around him.  The author also creates a new creature: a street-urchin/thief nicknamed "The Packrat" who finds himself swirling in and around the events of the time, coming into contact several times with the figure of Handel, and allowing the reader to experience the seamier side of life in 18th-century London through his eyes.  At a densely-written 576 pages, the author takes his time filling in the spaces, allowing the story of Handel's slow spiral into public derision and destitution to happen at a natural pace, and painting a very colorful, and moving accounts of Handel's devotion to his mother as well as his extraordinarily generous giving to charities .  If I have any quibbles, it's that the characters fall into familiar patterns of "good guy" "bad guy" and "street urchin with a heart of gold" which readers of a more cynical disposition might find hard to swallow; but there's enough grim realism coating the prose that the book never sinks into the trap of being a fluff piece.  In complexity and characterizations it's reminiscent of Dickens, with an ending that is very moving - this novel is well worth tracking down and reading from beginning to end.

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