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Published Oct 2018
384 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
A sweeping new novel that unfolds across fin-de-siècle Europe as it tells a story of ineffable passions - familial, artistic, romantic - and their power to shape, and destroy, a life.
Brodie Moncur is a brilliant piano tuner, as brilliant in his own way as John Kilbarron - "The Irish Liszt" - the pianist Brodie accompanies on all of his tours from Paris to Saint Petersburg, as essential to Kilbarron as the pianist's own hands. It is a luxurious life, and a level of success Brodie could hardly have dreamed of growing up in a remote Scottish village, in a household ruled by a tyrannical father. But Brodie would gladly give it all up for the love of the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive - and consort to Kilbarron. And though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie's passion for her only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous - what Brodie doesn't know about Lika, and about her connection to Kilbarron and his sinister brother, Malachi, eventually testing not only his love for her but his ability, and will, to survive.
"Starred Review. Reading this masterly novel from Boyd is like easing into a comfortable prose chair. The language, story, and setting all converge in a richly satisfying human drama; highly recommended." - Library Journal
"This man-on-the-run tale, which wraps up at one exotic end of the Earth, is strangely ageless and very entertaining." - Publisher's Weekly
"Boyd beautifully paints the settings and the moods they evoke while sending readers on Brodie's adventurous, troublesome, and transformative journey." - Booklist
"All for Love or The Road Not Taken might have served as alternate titles for this largely good-humored, not especially deep-digging, quality entertainment." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eamonn McCabe
William Boyd has received world-wide acclaim for his novels. They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize) An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His novels and stories have been published around the world and have been translated into over thirty languages. He is also the author of a collection of ...
... Full Biography
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Link to William Boyd's Website
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