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Title: Music & Silence by Rose Tremain, Jenny Agutter ISBN: 0-7540-0717-0 Publisher: Chivers Audio Books Pub. Date: November, 2001 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 14 List Price(USD): $110.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.19 (31 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: At the center, a love story...
Comment: Peter Claire travels in 1629 from England to Denmark to be part of King Christian IV's orchestra. Swirling around him are tons of stories, and at least 12+ different viewpoints are used in the book, each showing the differences of how people's age, sex and status makes them view events. King Christian and his wife Kirsten's marriage is on the rocks, the country of Denmark is almost broke, and Peter and his love Emilia are kept away from each other. We also see the stories of how King Christian rose to become a king, and how Peter's sister prepares for a marriage at home, while Emilia's family falls apart because of her wicked stepmother's horrible games. You will not be able to predict what will happen next, and you often wonder if Peter and Emilia will EVER be reunited with all lies and deceptions surrounding them. This is truly one of the best historical fiction books I have ever read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Witty, elegant writing and complex themes
Comment: Big and bawdy, hilarious and dark, grotesque and graceful, this winner of Britain's Whitbread Award explores complex themes of love, beauty, power and ego, betrayal, politics, ambition and selfishness.
With the intricate structure of a masterful musical piece (like the beautiful air that tragically obsesses one of the minor characters), the story is set in vivid 17th century Denmark and centers around Peter Claire, English lutenist. Arriving in Copenhagen in 1629 to join the Royal Orchestra of King Christian IV, Claire is aghast to discover he will be playing in a cold, dank wine cellar, open to the elements so the wine may breathe. The orchestra's miserable confinement serves the king's ego and ideas of beauty. Through an ingenious system of pipes, the music rises upward without distortion so the disembodied sound appears ghostly or heaven-sent. For Christian, enjoyment without human distraction; for his guests an impressive marvel.
Point and counterpoint, other voices rise as Tremain shifts the narrative among characters. Lusty, beautiful, adulterous young Kirsten, the King's consort who will never be queen, trapped by Christian's love for her, determines to drive him to indifference. Her favorite handmaid, Emilia, thrust from her family by her father's lust for his new wife, awakens to Peter's true love. The King, sunk in fear and melancholy over a fortuneteller's prophecy and the collapse of his once lofty ambitions, ruminates over his passion for perfection and the betrayal of his childhood friend.
Captivated by Peter's angelic beauty, Christian fastens on the lutenist. Likewise captivated by Emilia's melancholy innocence, Kirsten will not be separated from Emilia. Both use their minions without regard for their own wishes.
Peter plays for Christian for the first time: "When the song is over he glances at the King, but the King doesn't move. His wide hands clutch the arms of the chair. From the left side of his dark head falls a long, thin plait of hair, fastened with a pearl. 'In Springtime,' Christian says suddenly, 'Copenhagen used to smell of lilacs and of linden. I do not know where this heavenly scent has gone.' "
And in the next moment we meet his Kirsten: "Well, for my thirtieth birthday I have been given a new Looking-glass which I thought I would adore. I thought I would dote upon this new Glass of mine. But there is an error in it, an undoubted fault in its silvering, so that the wicked object makes me look fat. I have sent for a hammer."
Lesser characters pursue their own driving concerns. The Queen mother guards her treasure from her son's grasping needs. A widowed Irish countess pines after Peter and contrives to follow him to Denmark. Peter's family tries to entice him home. Kirsten's mother hatches plots, which will not advance her daughter. Emilia's stepmother's appetites consume her stepsons. A poor town, buoyed by the King's mining plans, suffers, quite literally, from their collapse.
As the thwarted desires of Peter and Emilia advance and recede (both of them pawns of their selfishly loving employers) dramas and intrigues swirl around them. Each of the interconnecting subplots are fully developed, with histories, secrets and absorbing characters.
Tremain's ("Restoration," "The Way I Found Her") characters, with all their faults and aspirations, connect to the reader through their complex emotional lives. Each (save for Peter and Emilia who are too young and pure of heart) has a dark core. But none are purely villainous. Even monumentally selfish Kirsten, ruled by her passions, occasionally succumbs to momentary tenderness. Or a spontaneous tantrum.
At times the narrative swells with the moral force of a fairy tale, other times it gallops along like a classic romance. Always, the beauty of the author's language, its quiet grace and crashing crescendos, draws the reader into a 17th century world alive with people whose human responses are timeless.
Rating: 4
Summary: Doings in Denmark
Comment: Setting a historical novel at the time of King Christian IV offers many ambiguities. For one not only is the fate of the main characters in suspense, but also are the real ones. The paucity of literture on the king and his consort adds to the suspense of the story.
This book is imbued with a strong sense of fantasy and what could be termed a form of magic realism. At times one feels as though one has entered a private world, much like the one that one of the characters a five year old named Marcus periodically inhabits.
But perhaps the most perfectly realized character in the book is not King Christian, his mother Sofia (who finds new ways of hoarding gold as Denmark heads towards bankruptcy), Peter Claire the lutinist, or even Emila, but the kings consort, Kirstin. Kirstin is the uncrowned queen of Denmark and quite the sensualist. No cruelty seems beyond her and the "selections from her private papers" are some of the best parts of the book. She is a creature of pure selfish instincts however she might argue against this view. Rose Tremain says in an interview published at the end of the book that she enjoyed writing these sections most of all. The reading of these sections are just as enjoyable.
Tremain also has a good sense of creating a fantastic world filled with many stimulating details. Her gift for prose makes even a blank piece of paper appear sexy, quite a feat for even the most polished prose stylist.
This is a remarkable book and the author well-deserves all the praise that she has received for this work.
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Title: Restoration: A Novel of Seventeenth-Century England by Rose Tremain ISBN: 0140244883 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Colour by Rose Tremain ISBN: 0374126054 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 21 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Sacred Country by Rose Tremain ISBN: 0671886096 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain ISBN: 0671035703 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Gilgamesh: A Novel by Joan London ISBN: 0802117414 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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