An Equal Music - Vikram Seth

I first read An Equal Music when I was fourteen, and since that date it's been one of my favourite books. I picked the book up because I've always been a keen musician, so anything with music in the title drew me in, but the music isn't so crucial to the plot that someone with little or no musical background would be unable to understand the book. Essentially the book follows its main character, Michael, violinist in a string quartet (Piers, Helen and Billy making up this quartet) and his journey through life and old loves (Julia). The story follows married Julia's affair with Michael - a somewhat tragic tale of first love, told so beautifully by Vikram Seth. ...  Read the complete review

An Equal Music is primarily a book about classical music. This is what attracted me to it, I am not a huge classical music fan and would not know a semi-quaver from a crotchet - but I spend a great deal of time reading and thus am always willing and eager to try something different. The author, Vikram Seth is highly regarded and known for his books that have a delicately moving plot line, that explore aspects of human devotion, motivation and desire. Moreover, Seth is well travelled and has lived in a great diversity of countries, thus lending his books a multi-layered perspective. Well so I was told and read. In this novel Seth follows the life of a violin ...  Read the complete review

An Equal Music is a story in which a musician, Michael, left his only true love, Julia, in Vienna ten years ago. He finds out by pure chance that she lives in London and is married with a child. They are both still in love with each other, though, and have an affair, and although we know it's wrong I think the reader gets drawn into the book with the narrator's hope that Julia will leave James. A kind of catharsis! Her visits are infrequent and unpredictable so Michael lives life always on edge and it plays havoc with his music. The others in his string quartet ask Julia to play piano with them in a special concert in Vienna and she agrees, but Michael ...  Read the complete review