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Publisher:
Picador (Macmillan UK) |
Release
Date: January 2003 |
ISBN:
0330492675 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Hardback |
Buy
it at Amazon US
|| UK |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Historical Midlist [1886 London & Burma] |
Reviewed:
2003 |
Reviewer:
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewer
Notes: |
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The
Piano Tuner
By Daniel
Mason
Edgar
Drake is a piano tuner whose passion is music. He lives quietly
and modestly with his wife and has never left England; now he is
summoned to the War Office on an October afternoon, where he is
given a remarkable task. He must travel to Burma in order to tune
the piano belonging to Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, an extraordinary
man who is trying to make peace between the British Empire and the
Shan States. The piano is a rare 1840 Erard, and Edgar is the most
suitable person for such an undertaking; the pay is reasonable and
adventure beckons, so off he goes. On his epic journey, he will
meet many strange people and see many remarkable things, fall in
love and be changed forever.
Teetering between literary and midlist
is a magic world where (at least in my opinion) most of the best
books exist, and this is one of them. Escape to a tactile world
of colour where gentle Edgar Drake, English to the soles of his
sensible shoes, is taken from misty London to the colorful, exotic
and dangerous Shan States. It is impossible these days to embark
on a journey quite like this–-one of the drawbacks of living
in a Global Village-– but at least we can read about it, and
debut writer Daniel Mason writes with an enviable fluency of a vanished
world. Here is a conflict between the world of the arts and the
world of the military, the twin meeting electrically in the character
of Carroll as well as the meeting of the British Empire and the
misunderstood East. Mason has spun a tale that sucks the reader
in from page one with a small cast of well-drawn characters and
a wonderful setting for his tale. Conrad would have loved this one;
highly recommended in all senses of the term.
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