| Product: |
An Equal Music - Vikram Seth |
| Date: |
12/05/02 (658 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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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 player, Michael - his playing in a string quartet and all the tensions that brings. Via the use of discussions about his past, we discover what formed Michael; the events of his final years as a music student in Vienna; the impact of an over bearing music teacher and most of all Julia a fellow musician whom he was passionately in love with - until. Well I cannot tell you what the until is or it will spoil the book, save to say that this until has shaped Michael into who he is and what he plays more than any other event in his life.
Primarily set in London, An Equal Music is a book about the rediscovery of past love - can it be rediscovered and recreated, can you turn back the clock and continue where you left off? Michael seems haunted by past ghosts and lost in his own terminable regret, he would give anything for the one chance to make amends, but does anybody ever get the chance to put things straight, so many years after they originally got skewed?
We therefore have a book about love, the love of music and the love of a woman. Seth highlights the problems of being a professional musician (and from my own brief encounter with the world of classical music and orchestras, via a relationship with a musician, the problems highlighted in the book are those that are faced in real
life) the cost of instruments, the irregular income, the creative tensions of playing in a group and the diminishing likelihood that anyone from a poorer background will ever be able to train as a musician - with all the expense involved.
However, I had one large problem in reading this book. It is hard to read if you know very little about music - how it is read, how it can be played and the multitude of technical terms that pervade the world of music. There were times where whole chapters were impossible to understand without reference to a dictionary and the internet - which for me interrupted the flow of the book. This is a book that cannot wholly be understood outside the small circle of professional musicians. Reading it did enhance my understanding of the musical world, but it was hard going in places and to me slightly highbrow and pretentious. Having said this the passion of the love story shone out of the text, the frustration, the obsession and the pure joy that occurs when two people click on all levels. There was an element of longing and suspense that was transmitted to me as the reader and in places you could truly feel what Michael was feeling.
Another positive aspect to the book is the writing, when An Equal Music is not involved with the technicalities of music, the book is beautifully written and makes some wonderful points about people and the human race:
"Piers and Alex had been equals. But with Tobias it was almost as if Piers was taking orders from a superior, an invisible fifth person who was perpetually present among us. It was a strange and unsettling episode, and one of the things that brought home to me how precarious, for all their strength, the ties between us are."
Anyone who has ever been under the influence of another person or who has been close to a person who has ultimately foregone their right to make their own choices, in deferment to the wishes of another, will immediately
relate to this paragraph.
"Sharing the morning seems more intimate, more deliciously awkward than sharing the night."
An Equal Music does have a beautifully revealed plot, piece-by-piece puzzles are solved and in places the book is cleverly written, suggesting things but never revealing them. The power of love over people and the happiness and destruction that this can bring are wonderfully portrayed and this is a book, as people have said of it, which is multi-layered - with many a sub-plot surrounding the main, will they won't they emotional cliff hanger of a love story.
The book features a rich tapestry of characters, both from the music world and the non-music world, the bullying but ultimately sensitive Piers, the deeply artistic and kind Billy, the erratic Helen and the business hardened merchant banker James - who seems to frustrate Michael at every turn.
Having said this, for me, the impenetrable nature of too many scenes about music detracted from an excellent story of human emotions. There was too much specific detail about music, which left me as an observer and part time listener of classical music, confused and almost isolated from what was going on. This spoilt what is a moving tale and beautifully written book. If you have a detailed knowledge of classical music, then this is a book that I think you would love, if not you may find parts distracting and otiose to the main plot. An Equal Music leaves you feeling that there is a separate musical world in London, enclosed and self-serving and that is perhaps why part of this book is pretty inaccessible to the non-music lover.
As a nice aside and sub-plot is the tale of Michael's ailing father's cat Zsa Zsa - the "salmon-filching, territorial, canny cat" any cat lovers and owners of such loving and fickle animals will surely relate and smile at her antics.
Published by Phoenix: £6.99 in paperback (£5.59. plus post
age and packaging from Amazon.co.uk): and a hefty tome at 484 pages. Interestingly this book is also available as an audio story cassette (£11.70 from Amazon.co.uk) - with much of the music discussed featuring in the background to the story telling, this may just make the tale more accessible to non-music boffins. I have not listened to this, but I am tempted.
ISBN: 0-75380-773-4.
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