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A review by georges_mom
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
4.0
A 90s-era classical music romantic lit fic I found via googling "novels about classical music." It's kind of sad that this very good book seems to have come out right before the internet/Amazon was taking off and is therefore (I think) out of print and not available as an ebook. I purchased a used copy.
In general, I really liked this novel, once the plot got going. It's very contemplative and not hurried at all. This type of pacing may not be for everyone...for example, the protagonist and his ex-lover, whose rekindled romance is the A-plot of the book, don't speak until over 50 pages in, if I'm recalling correctly.
My only real complaint (and the reason I didn't rate it as five stars) is the sheer volume of music shop talk. I think a good quarter of this not-short book is comprised of blow-by-blow rehearsal or performance scenes. Maybe it says something about me, but as a non-serious musician, I don't even like going to rehearsal that much, let alone reading about fictional characters' rehearsals. I can't imagine non-musicians would like those parts at all. I found myself easily distracted in the middle of the book and read several other things cover to cover as I was avoiding finishing this.
In the last 50-100 pages, the story became much more engrossing. Honestly, I felt more emotion in the subplot of the protagonist being potentially deprived of his loaned violin (that he'd been playing for decades) than the love story...which I'm not sure was the intent. But, overall, I generally liked this a lot.
In general, I really liked this novel, once the plot got going. It's very contemplative and not hurried at all. This type of pacing may not be for everyone...for example, the protagonist and his ex-lover, whose rekindled romance is the A-plot of the book, don't speak until over 50 pages in, if I'm recalling correctly.
My only real complaint (and the reason I didn't rate it as five stars) is the sheer volume of music shop talk. I think a good quarter of this not-short book is comprised of blow-by-blow rehearsal or performance scenes. Maybe it says something about me, but as a non-serious musician, I don't even like going to rehearsal that much, let alone reading about fictional characters' rehearsals. I can't imagine non-musicians would like those parts at all. I found myself easily distracted in the middle of the book and read several other things cover to cover as I was avoiding finishing this.
In the last 50-100 pages, the story became much more engrossing. Honestly, I felt more emotion in the subplot of the protagonist being potentially deprived of his loaned violin (that he'd been playing for decades) than the love story...which I'm not sure was the intent. But, overall, I generally liked this a lot.