The Melody: Jim Crace - Softcover

Crace, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509841377 ISBN 13: 9781509841370

Publisher: Picador, 2018

Synopsis

Alfred Busi, famed and beloved in his town for his music and songs, is now in his sixties, mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days alone in the large villa he has always called home. The night before he is due to attend a ceremony at the town's avenue of fame, Busi is attacked by a creature he disturbs as it raids the contents of his larder. Busi is convinced that what assaulted him was no animal, but a child, `innocent and wild', and his words fan the flames of old rumour - of an ancient race of people living in the woods surrounding the town - and new controversy: the town's paupers, the feral wastrels at its edges must be dealt with. Once and for all. As Busi's nephew's ambitious plans for himself and the town develop, he is able to fan the flames of rumour and soon Busi and the town he loves will be altered irrevocably. The Melody by Jim Crace is a story about grief and ageing, about reputation and the loss of it, about love and music and the peculiar way myth seeps into real life. And it is a political novel too - a rallying cry to protect those we persecute. It is lyrical and warm, intimate and epic, a powerful future classic.

About this title

Review:

'The Melody is an ambitious, powerful work which won’t disappoint his growing band of enthusiasts.' (Big Issue)

Strange, unsettling, brilliant - everything you'd expect from one of our most original and inventive novelists (Observer)

This could have been a straightforward political allegory about man's inhumanity to man . . . but Crace's seductively atmospheric novel, suffused as it is with archetypes and the stuff of dreams, is much richer, slyer and more mysterious. It's an elegy, too - for lost love, youth and talent - and deeply moving (Daily Mail)

The Melody is at its most poignant on the subject of growing old . . . every sentence is packed with Crace's characteristic lyricism . . . Anybody who reads The Melody will find plenty to admire and chew on (The Times)

Book Description:

From the Man Booker shortlisted author of Harvest, a novel about love and grief, music and myth, and about the way society treats its least fortunate.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1509841377
• ISBN 13: 9781509841370
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288