Review: Lydia Perovic's All That Sang tells an erotically charged story of obsessive love

I finished All That Sang in one sitting and picked up Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. They're different books: Perovic's novella is more fragmentary and while the prose has poetic moments, on some counts is maybe even more experimental, Smart's is a rush of poetry you have to let wash over you. And they're different stories – Perovic's about a Toronto opera critic who falls in love with her interview subject, France's leading (only?) female conductor – but they're both erotically charged stories of obsessive love, similarly permeated with the fatalism that arises when only one person in a relationship is so enamoured to become dispossessed of their self. Grand Central is of course a classic, but All That Sang holds its own in this comparison – not an update or a retelling, but a variation on a theme, on white-hot desire that ends in tears.