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An Equal Music: A Novel
Item Description
The violinist hero of Vikram Seth's third novel would very much like to be hearing secret harmonies. Instead, living in London 10 years after a key disaster, Michael Holme is easily irritated by his beautiful young (and even French!) girlfriend and by his colleagues in the Maggiore Quartet. In short, he's fed up with playing second fiddle in life and art. Yet a chance encounter with Julia, the pianist he had loved and lost in Vienna, brings Michael sudden bliss. Her situation, however--and the secret that may end her career--threatens to undo the lovers.
An Equal Music is a fraction of the size of Seth's A Suitable Boy, but is still deliciously expansive. In under 400 pages, the author offers up exquisite complexities, personal and lyrical, while deftly fielding any fears that he's composed a Harlequin for highbrows. During one emotional crescendo, Michael tells Julia, "I don't know how I've lived without you all these years," only to realize, "how feeble and trite my words sound to me, as if they have been plucked out of some housewife fantasy." In addition to the pitch of its love story, one of the book's joys lies in Seth's creation of musical extremes. As the Maggiore rehearses, moving from sniping and impatience to perfection, the author expertly notates the joys of collaboration, trust, and creation. "It's the weirdest thing, a quartet," one member remarks. "I don't know what to compare it to. A marriage? a firm? a platoon under fire? a self-regarding, self-destructive priesthood? It has so many different tensions mixed in with its pleasures."
An Equal Music is a novel in which the length of Schubert's Trout Quintet matters deeply, the discovery of a little-known Beethoven opus is a miracle, and each instrument has its own being. Just as Michael can't hope to possess Julia, he cannot even dream of owning his beloved Tononi, the violin he has long had only on loan. And it goes without saying that Vikram Seth knows how to tell a tale, keeping us guessing about everything from what the Quartet's four-minute encore will be to what really occasioned Julia's departure from Michael's life. (Or was it in fact Michael who abandoned Julia?) As this love story ranges from London to Michael's birthplace in the north of England to Vienna to Venice, few readers will remain deaf to its appeals. --Kerry Fried
Product Details
- Author: Vikram Seth
- Publication Date: 2000-05-02
- Publisher: Vintage
- Product Group: Book
- Manufacturer: Vintage
- Binding: Paperback, 400 pages
- Item Dimensions:
- Dimensions: 802L x 520W x 86H
- Weight: 63
- Package Dimensions:
- Dimensions: 790L x 510W x 100H
- Weight: 65
- List Price: $14.95
- ISBN: 037570924X
- ASIN: 037570924X
Customer Reviews
Average Amazon User Rating:
Vikram Seth
2010-06-21
Reviewer: dinu
I had really high hopes from this book as i loved "The Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth but i must say i was dissappointed,but anyone who wants to learn about music this is a good pick.....like all of his books this one is too well researched.
Enchanting
2010-04-23
Reviewer: Simon Bullard
This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read .
A gripping story .
Magically written .
The fiddler gets the boot
2010-04-23
Reviewer: Craig Wood
"An Equal Music" is almost but not quite a great book. A love story on two dimensions (a violinist for a woman, a violinist for his violin), the story is interesting and well written. It tells the tale of Michael Holme, who walks away from the love of his life, the pianist Julia McNicholl, and then spends years regretting it. By chance, their paths cross in London, where the romance is rekindled at great personal cost to both Michael and Julia.
The book is a good read on the bus or the train -- a few chapters here and a few chapters there. But to be honest, I never found the story to be very engrossing. The characters are hard to relate to, and very hard to like. Michael makes maddeningly stupid decisions, and Julia leads a spineless and ineffectual life. Sure, the travails of a book's characters shouldn't hamper one's enjoyment of the story too much, but these two made it very difficult to look forward to what happens next.
To me, the best part of the novel was its descriptions of the classical music that ties the characters together. The tension of rehearsals and performances, as well as the technical aspects of the measures and the movements that they play, made for fascinating reading. Seth's devotion to the subject, and careful research, came through loud and clear throughout the book. That, coupled with the author's lucid and lyrical writing style, were the highlights of this very good book.
Between music and silence
2009-09-29
Reviewer: Roochak
I don't read that many novels, yet at 380 pages, this story of classical music and obsessive love was over far too quickly.
It's been years since violinist Michael Holme broke up with pianist Julia McNicholl, but a chance encounter in a London traffic jam sparks their emotionally destructive relationship into life again. How long will it be before bliss veers into catastrophe, and will it take their musical careers and their relationships with their families with it?
"Family" takes on a flexible meaning in this story. Though Michael and Julia are still very much the children of their aging parents, Vikram Seth equates Julia's American husband and her young son with Michael's surrogate family, his bickering but devoted fellow members of the Maggiore String Quartet -- three wonderfully drawn characters whose company I began to miss whenever the action shifted to one of Michael and Julia's tainted erotic interludes. The story is told through Michael's voice, and while he's too selfish and oversensitive to be a likeable character, Seth's artistry lies in making him a sympathetic character, one who resembles many of us a little too closely for comfort. If you've ever acted against your own best interests while chasing your heart's desire, if you've ever done anything to screw up the lives of the people you love, you'll understand why Michael makes the mess of his life that he does. As a child, Michael escapes having his life's dream crushed only by grasping the slimmest lifeline of hope; the novel's ambiguous ending leaves us wondering if he can, or will, do so again.
Seth's descriptions of the process of music making are the glory of this book; if you're a player, they'll seem drawn from life, and if you're not, they'll make you wish you were.
Unequal Love Affairs
2009-01-08
Reviewer: D. K. Bagshaw
To me the love affair in this book of a man with his violin felt more compelling than the love affair with his pianist. The novel portrays prima donas incapable of satifying relationships whose lives only seem worthwhile when they make music. The descriptions and dialogue of the characters in social situations seemed overwrought and tedious. The description of the quartet's warm-up scale, the auction of a coveted violin, the search for a stringed instrument that could manage special tuning -- these were the more affecting parts of the novel to me.
I never got an understanding the title of the book. Can anyone help me out?
