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A review by jacki_f
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
3.0
I loved [b:The Winter Soldier|37946436|The Winter Soldier|Daniel Mason|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521937956l/37946436._SY75_.jpg|59674256], so I was keen to read Daniel Mason's first book, written 16 years earlier while he was a medical student. It's an uneven book, it has immense strengths but there are also irritating aspects that weren't there in his later book.
The Piano Tuner is set in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1886/1887. Edgar Drake is a piano tuner living in London with his (significantly more interesting) wife. He gets an assignment from the War Office to tune a piano belonging to Anthony Carroll, a British Surgeon-Major living in a remote corner of Burma. It's a "Heart of Darkness" premise: a convoluted journey to a remote jungle where an enigmatic character reigns.
The book is impeccably researched - lots of details about Burmese history and geography, about pianos and tuning. It has a terrific sense of place and it's a mesmerising and hypnotic read - I had some odd dreams while reading this.
However the characters feel underdeveloped, the plot is unnecessarily confusing and the most annoying part (to me) is the way it occasionally, mid-scene or even mid-paragraph, lurches from the past tense to the present tense and back again. I don't know what the purpose for this is, but I found it extremely annoying.
A dreamy, atmospheric book with a very interesting premise that doesn't quite live up to its promise.
The Piano Tuner is set in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1886/1887. Edgar Drake is a piano tuner living in London with his (significantly more interesting) wife. He gets an assignment from the War Office to tune a piano belonging to Anthony Carroll, a British Surgeon-Major living in a remote corner of Burma. It's a "Heart of Darkness" premise: a convoluted journey to a remote jungle where an enigmatic character reigns.
The book is impeccably researched - lots of details about Burmese history and geography, about pianos and tuning. It has a terrific sense of place and it's a mesmerising and hypnotic read - I had some odd dreams while reading this.
However the characters feel underdeveloped, the plot is unnecessarily confusing and the most annoying part (to me) is the way it occasionally, mid-scene or even mid-paragraph, lurches from the past tense to the present tense and back again. I don't know what the purpose for this is, but I found it extremely annoying.
A dreamy, atmospheric book with a very interesting premise that doesn't quite live up to its promise.