An Equal Music (Signed, US Edition)

Seth, Vikram

ISBN 10: 0767902912 / ISBN 13: 9780767902915

Published by Broadway, New York, 1999

About this Item

This 1999 1st US Edition/Printing is ***SIGNED*** by the author on the title page. It is in Fine/Fine condition and not price-clipped. Seller Inventory # 008836

Bibliographic Details

Title: An Equal Music (Signed, US Edition)

Publisher: Broadway, New York

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition.

Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis:

Edition Phoenix House, First Impression, 1999. ISBN: 1-861591-17-9. HARDBACK. 390 pages, size: 16.3 x 24.2 x 4.2 cm. Just light tan to paper edges. Other than that, the book remains in very good condition: dust cover intact albeit minor rubbing to edges; red cloth hard cover bright with gilt lettering on spine; text all clean, neat and tight. Prompt dispatch from UK.

Review:

Michael plays second violin in an up-and-coming Maggiore Quartet, lives on the north side of Hyde Park, takes early morning dips in the Serpentine, has a French girlfriend named Virginie. But his mind is constantly drawn to his first and only love, Julia, whom he knew in Vienna many years earlier. When he catches sight of Julia on a London bus, he cannot help but pursue her. Vikram Seth's new novel is a gently-paced, multi-layered work, proceeding in short sections which flit from Michael's ongoing search for Julia back to his childhood as a Rochdale butcher's son, his early training and breakdown in Vienna under the tyrannical Carl Kall, and the emotional history of his quartet; while Michael's discovery of a Beethoven trio rewritten as a string quintet acts as a motif for Michael's pursuit of the lost Julia: can Michael recapture the magic of the past, like Beethoven, who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed? Seth is quite brilliant at conveying the intense and complex interplay of chamber musicians, in rehearsal and performance (an odd, obsessed, introspective, separatist breed), and manages the near-impossible--to write in 1999 about Art and Love without embarrassment. --Alan Stewart