Yasmina Reza is best known as the author of the immensely successful Tony award-winning play Art. Her latest work, Hammerklavier, is a bittersweet collection of autobiographical sketches that have love, loss, and the relentless passage of time as their themes.

Convinced that one's deepest thoughts can be said simply, Reza does so with unequaled humor and perceptiveness. She contemplates evanescence and death in her young daughter's toothless smile, secretly mourning that it will inevitably change. In the title story, the sometimes adversarial but very loving relationship Reza shared with her father is examined in terms of their love of music.