A review by angelayoung
Music & Silence by Rose Tremain

5.0

The research Tremain must have done for this book is astounding but it never shows. I heard an interview with her on Woman's Hour recently (about her new novel, Merivel, A Man of his Time) in which she quoted Rudyard Kipling's attitude to research. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that you should build up your research the way you build up a fire but when you're actually writing a book you should merely riddle that fire ... and Tremain is a past mistress of that. I loved this book. It has so many stories within it (a way of novel-writing I love ... ) and so many memorable scenes: the musicians in the underground room so that music sounds in the King's rooms as if by magic; and the beautiful beginnings of two of the characters gentle love for each other in those very basement rooms. The mist and the buried clock; the (very) strange appetites of Kirsten Munk and so much more. I look forward to every Tremain novel and am looking forward to reading the sequel to Restoration, to finding out how Merivel develops - he who spoke some of the most wonderful lines about madness in fiction: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103123.Restoration