Music & Silence

Tremain's previous novel, The Way I Found Her, dealt powerfully with the present day. Now, as she did in her marvellous Restoration, she uses her gifts both for recreating the historical past and for summoning up the magic of story-telling to give us this fine book, set in Denmark in 1629-30 around the court of the troubled King Christian IV. Seeking in music an answer to his own problems, the king summons from Ireland to play in the royal orchestra a young lutenist, who becomes both observer and victim of a court filled with domestic intrigue and sexual resentment. Many voices sound here, and over the course of the book many strange tales are told, in a spirit of fairytale innocence appropriate to the era and the Nordic land of Hans Christian Andersen. This is the age of Tycho Brahe, whose prophecies and predictions play a part in the story, and whose changing cosmos lies behind it. The tale is splendidly researched; it is also a classic romance. Yet coming from a mature, serious and distinguished writer at the top of her powers, it is also a subtle meditation: on the struggles of existence; on human dreams, aspirations and intuitions; and on the ways these are so often centred around the notion of and the mysterious and cosmological power of music. Review by MALCOLM BRADBURY Editor's note: Malcolm Bradbury is the author of several novels, including Eating People is Wrong, and was also co-founder of the trailblazing creative writing course at East Anglia. (Kirkus UK)