She faces preparations for her father's funeral, endures disturbing visions regarding her recently born daughter, Anna, and suffers restrictions imposed by the Catholic Church on her family and her childhood.

The critic(s) praised the complexity of Catherine's character, while also balancing this with an acknowledgement that this overall did "overshadow everyone else in a novel guided less by 'story' than by musical tides and perturbations;" they also noted that "MacLaverty's mildly impressionistic approach [results in the] slow, even anticlimactic pace of some scenes.

"[1] The reviewer for The Washington Post, Ambrose Clancy, found the excessive clerical and saintly characterization of Catherine's life and predispositions to be overly persistent, distracting, or frustrating.

The examples they give include descriptions by characters on how music is connected to religion, the history of figures like St. Cecelia and St. Gerard, and the sacred feeling that Catherine experiences when her works are performed in a retrofitted chapel.

Instead of criticizing the ecclesiastic elements in it, Dickson heralds the "musical metaphors [that] fill [it]", with "tone, texture and form recombining as [Catherine] gets better, rebuilding the links to her past.