The Music Room: Summary and book reviews of The Music Room by William Fiennes, plus links to an excerpt from The Music Room and a biography of William Fiennes.
The Music Room A Memoir
by William Fiennes
Hardcover: Sep 2009,
224 pages.
Paperback: Sep 2010,
224 pages.
A bittersweet description of an ancient family house in an enchanted setting, and of growing up with a damaged brother.
William Fiennes spent his childhood in a moated castle, the perfect environment for a child with a brimming imagination. It is a house alive with history, beauty, and mystery, but the young boy growing up in it is equally in awe of his brother Richard. Eleven years older and a magnetic presence, Richard suffers from severe epilepsy. His illness influences the rhythms of the family and the house’s internal life, and his story inspires a journey, interwoven with a loving recollection, toward an understanding of the mind.
This is a song of home, of an adored brother and the miracle of consciousness. The chill of dark historical places coexists with the warmth and chatter of the family kitchen; the surrounding landscapes are distinguished by ancient trees, secret haunts, the moat’s depths and temptations. Bursting with tender detail, The Music Room is a sensuous tribute to place, memory, and the permanence of love.
The Music Room lacks the gossipy tone prevalent among so many current memoirs; it exposes no family scandal or deep emotional scars, and pushes no political agenda. It is, however, a gentle love-filled memoir which should appeal to many, especially those with an interest in modern castle life! (Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Kirkus Reviews
Interspersed is a precis of the history of research regarding his brother's status epilecticus. An artful memory piece about a unique home life.
Publishers Weekly
The book feels fluffed up at times with asides on the history of epilepsy, but more often than not these serve the greater purpose of evoking a sense of continuity and reflection.
Sunday Times (UK)
Evocative and wistful…glows with the joy of remembrance.
Financial Times
This is a moving book, written with sensitivity. Fiennes writes with great precision and skill; his images stay with you.
The Guardian (UK)
This is no misery memoir...on the contrary, it is a thoughtful and lyrical account of an extraordinary childhood.
New Statesman
Beautifully written…detailed without being overblown, precise without being precious.
The Spectator (UK)
Fiennes has a poet's gift for creating images that are fresh and original...yet so natural as to seem almost inevitable.
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
It is a beautiful and fortifying book, even a great one.
Broughton Castle
The unnamed location of William Fiennes' memoir is Broughton Castle, a
medieval manor house near the village of Broughton, two miles southwest of
Banbury, in the county of Oxfordshire, England.
The estate is situated at the confluence of three streams, making it an ideal
location for a fortified manor house complete with moat. No one is sure when the
first building was constructed at the site, but parts of the current structure
date to around 1300 CE, when Sir John de Broughton II began developing it.
The property was sold in 1377 to William of Wykeham (Bishop of Winchester;
Chancellor of England; founder of both Winchester College and New College, Oxford).
His descendent, Margaret Wykeham, and her husband, Sir William Fiennes, second
Lord of Saye and Sele (a title his father had earned a few years earlier for
services during Britain's Hundred Years' War against France)...
An incandescent memoir of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away.
From the bestselling author of She's Not There comes
another buoyant, unforgettable memoir—I'm Looking Through You is about growing up in a haunted house...and making peace with the ghosts that dwell in our hearts.
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(1225 words).
New Statesman
