Love is Blind

This is another novel pubished some years ago that has been lurking in my TBR (to be read) pile for some time. I should have got around to it earlier, as I was a big fan of the author’s early novels, A Good Man in Africa and An Ice Cream War, in which he proved to be the master of writing strong or humorously imperfect characters with unusual life stories while also managing to stay away from conventional or predictable plots and settings.
 
Here, we have the young Scot, Brodie Moncur, a consumptive piano tuner who falls in love with the mysterious Lika Blum, a second-rate Russian soprano who is already involved with John Kilbarron, a contradictory and passionate piano virtuoso known throughout Europe as the “Irish Liszt”. Hovering in the wings is Malachi, John’s sinister brother. Brodie’s home life is also complicated, with six sisters and one brother cowering under the iron fist of a foul-mouthed and zealous Bible-thumping father.
 
Brodie is glad to escape Scotland when his Edinburgh employer sends him to Paris to improve the business prospects of the Channon piano company. There, he becomes entangled in the musical career of Kilbarron while secretly starting a relationship with Lika. What follows is a game of romantic cat-and-mouse that eventually escalates into a spectacular drama of love and revenge worthy of Dumas or Pushkin, with the climax taking place in 1906 in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.
 
Brodie is a likeable young man, meticulous in his work, but perhaps less cautious with his emotions as he falls for Lika’s charms. Kilbarron displays all the neuroses, fears and jealousies of a fading celebrity. Lika’s fatalistic Russian character is spot-on, with her often ruminating on death. (Brodie’s battle with tuberculosis makes this even more significant.) The historical research is impeccable and all the secondary characters are just as vividly drawn as the leading players.
 
I was so immersed in this amazing book that I felt a little bereft at its end. Great entertaining reading and fully worth Five Stars.
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk

Dymocks Australia

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