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‘Exciting, romantic with an edge-music, mystery, a hero who knows science and sailboats-this is a book to enjoy.’ —Anne Roiphe
‘One should never be caught by surprise with Ron Odrich: a periodontist who is at the same time an exquisite musician and who now reveals to be also a storyteller. Well aware of his Italian blood, Ron Odrich is paradoxically a Renaissance man living in an age cursed by specialization. And Renaissance men never confined their mind and their creativity to one single field: they always navigate all the possible waters: from Science to Art, from Medicine to Literature, from Mathematics to Music, from good to bad things. Thus, when with a big self-critical laugh, he confessed to me that he was writing a novel, I did not move an eyelash. I simply smiled and said: “Here we go. What’s next?” But I did not smile at all when he added: “You know, before sitting down at my desk, I always wonder what my characters are going to do, and when I write I always find out that I cannot control them. That I can only follow them, obey them.”
‘True. As I used to repeat, we never know which is the sperm that penetrates the ovule of creativity and gives life to the written story. An emotion? A reasoning? A souvenir, a need? Creativity is like Love: it may sprout from logical reasons as well as from irrational impulses. But one thing is certain: if the ovule splits and multiplies, if the pregnancy develops, the book’s embryo becomes a book fetus who writes itself. Novels’ characters live their own personal life, and the writer can only do what they want. The writer is not their father or their mother, as we would like to believe. He (or she) simply is the instrument, which puts in words their thoughts and their actions.
‘Whether he or she likes it or not. As full of humor as he always is, Ron Odrich lies to say that “Perfect Pitch” abounds with indecent characters: people who an author should be ashamed of. So, I feel the necessity of reminding him that in moving from periodontics and from music into the risky waters of story telling he has put his hands on the most fascinating reality of novels: their characters never identify or necessarily identify with their creator. They, the characters may turn out to be quite terrible, but the fact is that he, their creator, is such a decent, civil person.’
—Oriana Fallaci, preface to “Perfect Pitch,” March 23, 2006
[Oriana Fallaci was a world renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose recent work included “The Force of Reason,” continuation of “The Rage and the Pride” on the clash between Islam and the West.]
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About Ron Odrich: