The Wonder Singer Book

The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa, is novel within a novel, each one filled with interesting insights about love and loss, fame and fortune. And occasionally misfortune.
Mark Lockwood, a freelance writer chosen to ghostwrite the story of legendary soprano, Mercè Casals is left with five hundred hours of taped conversations (and "off the record" memories) with which to reconstruct her life after the singer is found dead in her bathtub. Her death triggers renewed interest in her life by her (and Lockwood's) agent, Hollywood Hank, who decides that a "name" writer is the best way to capitalize on the situation. Hank immediately hires a famous author to finish the book, but when his attempts at firing Lockwood and retrieving the tapes fail, both writers are forced into a race to gather information and produce the first publishable manuscript.
Rabasa tells the tale of both singer and writer by alternating chapters of Lockwood with chapters from his (soon to be) finished version of the singer's autobiography. Her story unfolds like an opera in its own right, complete with being orphaned at the age of nine, enduring an on-again-off-again marriage to a philandering tenor, and a love affair with the Crown Prince of Montefino. Lockwood's story is a little different. Believing that he alone has been entrusted to tell the diva's story, he goes into hiding with the tapes and a few stolen files. At this point Rabasa tries to mold the story into a madcap romp with clandestine meetings, flirtations with the Diva's former nurse, threatening phone calls, and a larger than life female impersonator who shows up at Casals' funeral dressed as, you guessed it, Casals.
Rabasa's has a nice way with words. "Lockwood" writes about the singer's husband saying, "…he used the finest onionskin paper and a Parker pen with ink the color of lapis lazuli, and always his scent on the paper, the mixture of bay rum and the licorice drops he liked and the lemony tonic he used to slick back his wavy hair." But good writing is not enough to sustain a novel with characters that conveniently appear and disappear, plot lines that peter out and never resurface, monologues that seem improbable, and a threat of violence that never gets out of the writer's head and onto the page. Perhaps Lockwood's estranged wife was addressing both Rabasa and Lockwood when she says, it's like "… you don't really care whether anyone is listening or thinking that you're making sense, as long as the words resonate in your head."