Play It Again, Lila

The world has an appetite for musically gifted children that rarely extends to adults. Early brilliance is easy to admire, but once the veneer of precociousness fades, the long business of becoming a mature, reflective artist begins. Enter the Canadian pianist Lila Rys, dour and brattish at twenty-one, virtuosic but emotionally tone-deaf, and hobbled by a bolshie attitude that belies her inner anxiety. Relocated to New York City, she receives cold comfort from her new agent, new instructor, and new cohort of musical peers, all of whom are part of the unsympathetic world of adult performance.

Not that this is a tale of material or emotional suffering. The Rys family is rich in love and, it’s implied, means. Lila’s twin, Lucas, a graduate student at NYU, provides limitless sage advice; their mother flies in from Toronto at the drop of a hat; their uncle installs a rented Steinway piano in his Manhattan high-rise, then decamps to his Westchester abode, letting the...