Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen

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Jane Hawking

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Pages: 612 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0330392476

Pub: Pan Books

Pub date: 2000-09-08

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 572452

Editorial Review:

He is one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century whose A Brief History of Time, first published in 1988, catapulted the Cambridge scientist to international fame. She was his wife whose first meetings with the boy with "the floppy hair" and subsequent marriage to him overwhelmed Jane Hawking's life. As she writes in her memoir Music to Move The Stars: "The story of our relationship would be unremarkable... but for the complications of genius and terrible illness". Almost from the beginning of their married life the Hawkings had to cope with the swift onset of Stephen's motor-neurone disease with its wasting paralysis of body and speech but not of his mind. At the same time his academic career was flourishing, culminating after more than 20 years in the monumental success of his bestselling book. In this lengthy and eloquent account that is as much a biography of her now ex-husband as it is a recollection of her own life Jane Hawking describes the difficulties--both public and private--of supporting a partner who needed 24-hour nursing care while also bringing up their three children. She writes poignantly of "the callous face of a society often both uncaring and uncomprehending", the suppression of her own academic pursuits, the close association she formed with family friend Jonathan Jones (now her husband), the breakdown of the Hawkings' marriage after Stephen left her for his nurse and the devastation she felt after her unusual but incredible partnership with him came to an end.

Music to Move the Stars is not just a forthright analysis of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century but also a probing account of a marriage dealing with more than its fair share of complexities and constraints and the effects of unexpected fame on the life of one not-so-ordinary family. --Catherine Taylor

Reader Reviews:

Fascinating, but the voice of Stephen Hawking is missing. (2/3 people found this helpful)

Jane Hawking apparently gave up everything to marry Stephen, who was already afflicted with, but not yet massively disabled by, motor neurone disease. This very large and extraordinarily detailed account of her 25 years with Stephen is most remarkable for the purpleness of its prose. Jane seems to have written with early nineteenth century speech patterns in mind, and a large thesaurus at her elbow. What it markedly lacks, however, is the voice of Stephen himself. In this account, he appears as an increasingly despotic, single-minded and uncaring man, content to allow Jane to struggle physically and emotionally with his illness. Illuminating for those of us who knew only that he had left his wife for one of his nurses, however, is the carefully-drawn picture of Jane's infidelity for some years prior to the break-up of the marriage. Jonathan Jones is presented as a living saint, happy to give large amounts of his time to support the Hawkings for (Jane would have us believe) no more than the opportunity to be near to Jane. That she gives no thought whatsoever to how Jones' constant presence in Stephen's house might make the severely disabled man feel (and, indeed, how he might feel about Jane regularly taking Jones on holiday with her and the Hawkings' youngest son)is remarkable in itself.

A very interesting read, but it tells us much more about Jane Hawking's inability to empathise with others than it tells us about the cleverest man in the world.

As a man and as a physicist I learned a lot from this book. (1/1 people found this helpful)

This book is a real masterpiece both for the manner it is written and for the content. It gives a profound and touching description of the life of a well-known family. The book, contrary to rumours, is a very balanced one with no gossip whatsoever. As a man and as a Physicist I learned a lot from this book.

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