Rating: 
Summary: Good book for studying the craft of writing
Review: I enjoyed the technical marvels of this book, and I recommend it to folks who are studying the art of writing fiction. The way that Mason weaves a leitmotif throughout each scene and character is wondrous. For example, many reviewers mentioned "The Man with One Story." Indeed, this man tells one story. The reader finds out later that each person hears it differently. Completely differently. The Man With One Story tells each character the one defining moment of their lives. Likewise, each character has an attraction to music: either the way he's transported through Bach, or the leaves wrestling in a lotus plant, or the musical patter in the shouts of children. On the downside, I'm not sure this novel poses a question, or makes it clear that Edgar is making a conscious choice to gain something while losing something. I was so transported by the language that it didn't matter.
Rating: 
Summary: An entrancing journey into an unknown world
Review: After all of the reviews here, there is little new to say but I want to add my voice to those who loved this book. Edgar Drake's long, slow journey into the mystery of 19th Century British Burma is beautiful and captivating and I enjoyed every minute of it. I found Mason's pacing perfect for the story he is telling. If the first half of the book is slow, it seems to me that it was intended to be so and I never found it boring. For me, the entire journey was a voyage of discovery so the asides into Burmese history, piano tuning, etc. were part of the joy of the book. I would concede The Piano Tuner is not a perfect book: some of the characterizations are in my opinion shallow (in particular that of Dr. Carroll who doesn't rise much above being a cartoon figure), the plotting has some holes (Carroll's need for the piano much less his need for a tuner still eludes me) and at times, as some reviewers have noted, the book reads like a high school or college creative writing exercise in some of the techniques used. (I'm thinking here of dream sequences and points where the book abruptly switches from an impersonal third person narrator to an almost stream of conciousness dialog.) Still, taken as a whole and considering how much I enjoyed Edgar Drake's journey, I think these are minor quibbles. I recommend the book highly.
Rating:
Summary: A memorable tale of one man¿s journey to self-discovery
Review: In October 1886, about a year after the British invaded and took over the lower region of Burma, a shy and modest piano tuner Edgar Drake received a strange request from the British War Office. The Crown had requested of his immediate service in repairing an Erard grand piano thousands of miles away, its soundboard swollen and miserably out of tune. He was to leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma; settled deep in a country that was almost too dangerous for a civilian deprived of any military training. The piano belonged to one Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll who had requested the piano 30 some years earlier and threatened to resign from service had the acquisition not granted by the Crown. The irreplaceable doctor, whose eccentric peace-making strategies comprised of poetry, medicine and music, despite much disapproval and jeering from contemporaries, had mitigated tension in Burma and brought a tentative quiet to the south Shan states. Though the request for piano repair in war states was strange and incredulous, the premise of the debut novel is tantalizing enough to elicit interest to move on as Edgar Drake embarked on his journey to the Far East. The first part of the novel detailed his journey through Europe, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, India, then into Burma - but still that was not it as Drake had to venture into the jungle, almost in dugout, from Rangoon to the distant fort of Mae Lwin. The encounter with officers whom he had always mistrusted, Burmese, bandits, and soothsayers further intensify the suspense of what Drake might expect at his destination, and accentuate his thirst for the damaged piano. Author Daniel Mason, who had spent a year studying malaria on the Thai-Myanmar border, where much was the book was written, delivers an absorbing story of a world in transition, through vicissitude, enlivened through characters who loved music and peace and suffer from warfare with equal intensity. The book delineates the complicated cross-currents of emerging espionage, the British contention with the Limbin Confederacy, the consolidation forces of French forces in Indo-China, and local insurgence that threatened British hold of remote regions. Though not as rich and layered an epic as The Glass Palace, The Piano Tuner subtlety probes the meaning of identity of homeland. To Edgar Drake, it was his duty to the piano and not the Crown and he what mattered the most was that he could help in the cause of music. While at one point he felt disconcerted at the delay of repair and his hope began to vanished, he also felt like Odysseus who could no longer return home after witnessing all the wonders of a country which he struggled to eke out an inkling of understanding. The Piano Tuner is a memorable tale of one man's journey to self-discovery and passion. 2004 (16) © MY
Rating:
Summary: A terrific read
Review: I read The Piano Tuner and thoughts of many other books...Heart of Darkness, Passage to India and the Odyessy came to mind....to say nothing of the works of R. Kipling. Nevertheless, this book is an amazing first novel filled with beauty, intrigue, mystics and seers, stories within stories, a journey to self-discovery and uncertain realities. All this in 300+ pages!
The poetry of Mason's language sings, bringing to the reader's eye a foreign world of great beauty, not just the lush green jungles of Burma, but of the people who inhabit this mysterious and dangerous country.
Why Carroll needs a piano tuner from England is never made entirely clear and perhaps it doesn't really matter because the story is really about Drake, the mild-mannered introspecive piano tuner who travels from Victorian England to a tiny village deep in the jungles of Burma to tune a French piano.
Drake undergoes profound changes as he first travels to Burma and then lives in the tiny village of Mae Lwin. My first criticism of the book is that I wanted more of the interior life of Drake, a better understanding of how and why he changed. Mason didn't offer enough.
Secondly, the trip to Mae Lwin took at least half the book. At times, despite the beautiful prose, it was an effort to continue the trek with Drake. I'm glad I stuck to it.
The ending was abrupt but I thought perfect for this book.
Last but not least. The pages were jammed with the author's knowledge of Burma. Depending upon the reader, this could be a
plus or minus.
Rating:
Summary: Great first novel
Review: A Great first Novel!
I was lucky to pick up an advanced copy of this first novel at the library. It caught my attention with its subject matter as I had just read'Tournament of Shadows' by Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Brysac about the history of the 'great game' in Central Asia (a great non-fiction book). I found the Piano Tuner's adventure story and it telling against the roll of the British Army in the jungles of Burma an interesting backdrop to this novel set in the late 1800s. The Piano Tuner is going to be a big hit! It is so well written, filled with great visuals and as the Piano Tuner, Edgar Drake, travels from London to Burma just to tune a mysterious piano for a mysterious officer. It's basic structure reads like 'Heart of Darkness'. I really enjoyed this first novel. (I am sure Mr. Daniel Mason will not be able to complete medical school as we will all want to read his next book.) Now I wonder who will make this into a movie.. I see Ralph Fines in the lead.
Rating: 
Summary: enjoyable
Review: I found this book to be a good read and an impressive first novel - all the more so considering the author wrote it while in medical school. He did a great job of establishing and maintaining the feel of 19th century british burma. The characterizations were good too, with many of the characters classically romantic. My only two complaints are 1) the ending was rather abrupt, and seemed rushed, as if he ran out of steam and 2) occasionally he employed a sort of stream-of-consciousness/run-on-sentence style that was jarring, difficult to follow, and did not match the high level of craftmanship of the rest of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent...
Review: There's a noticable lack of polish to the writing in The Piano Tuner that distracts from what is actually a pretty good story. In parts, it reads like something from a college creative writing class, which is disappointing for a published book. Sometimes the author tends toward melodrama, and this is where the writing is weakest. The exotic backdrop of the story was compelling enough to keep me turning the pages, though I wish the dramatic tension had been turned up a notch. Also, I felt the ending was a bit of a letdown. (It almost had the same sort of ambiguity as the frequently anthologized story "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge," but not quite.) There are definite highlights in both the story and the writing, but it's a mixed bag overall. Mr. Mason is a gifted writer for his age, and he's sure to improve. I'd definitely give a look to his next book, but I was only lukewarm on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Dreamy and Hallucinatory, but Not Without Some Problems
Review: The centerpiece of Daniel Mason's lovely and graceful debut novel, THE PIANO TUNER, is a grand piano that belongs to Surgeon Major Anthony Carroll, a strange (and perhaps dangerous) officer stationed in a remote village in Burma. The piano isn't an ordinary grand piano...it's an 1840 Erard with a black mahogany veneer and a delicate mother-of-pearl inlay of flowers. THE PIANO TUNER opens in October 1886 and centers around shy, retiring Edgar Drake, a forty-one year old London piano tuner who is well-known as being one of the best in the business. In fact, he specializes in pianos made by the firm of Sebastian Erard. When Drake is summoned by the War Office and told to go to Burma to tune Carroll's piano, no one could be more surprised than Drake, himself. Readers might wonder why Carroll even has a grand piano in such a remote area of the world, but in THE PIANO TUNER, Mason makes the reasons seem quite believable. Surgeon Major Carroll has simply refused to work without one and only Surgeon Major Carroll, the British believe, can form the necessary alliances with Burma's royalty and thus stave off Siamese and French advancement into Indochina. Drake really doesn't want to go to Burma. He's not a traveling man, he doesn't like the military and he's happy at home with his wife, Katherine. Yet, go he does, not so much out of loyalty to Britain, as love for music and the piano. The journey to Burma takes up about one-third of the book (THE PIANO TUNER is quite slow paced, but I liked that aspect of it and I think it "fit"), but Mason's writing in these passages is some of the book's most poetic and lyrical. He seems to be especially good at setting and description. As Drake travels through France, Egypt, India and into Burma, he writes letters to Katherine that are filled with lush descriptions of the new sights he's seeing, the doubts and fears about the journey he's undertaking, his awe at the lush, brilliant beauty of the East. We realize, little by little, that Drake has been thoroughly seduced...by Burma (then Myanmar). When Drake finally does meet Anthony Carroll, he seems quite a bit like Kurtz in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. He obviously loves Burma, but he's an enigma. He can be ruthless, yet he has a sensitive side as well and loves both poetry and music. He also seems to be very happy to have Edgar Drake as a companion. Drake, however, is far more enchanted with Carroll's assistant, Khin Myo. I couldn't empathize completely with Drake's infatuation with Khin Myo. I kept remembering Katherine and her love for her husband. Mason is obviously a writer whose natural talents lie in the realm of setting and description rather than in character or dialogue. While Edgar Drake was characterized quite beautifully, both Carroll and Khin Myo are a little clichéd and a little "off key." The characters thoughts were rather clumsily written as was the dialogue, but at least the thoughts were there (many of today's authors skip them entirely, a huge mistake). The subplots were beautiful but they didn't connect as seamlessly to the main plot line as they should have. They had a disjointed quality where there should have been fluidity. THE PIANO TUNER is comprised of letters, official documents, reports and various stories told by various people at different times. All this makes for a rather choppy narrative, but only at times. However, I still thought a straightforward narrative would have served far better. This is definitely a story that needed the fluidity throughout that Mason lavishes on it when describing its setting. At times the writing is dreamy and hallucinatory and, at times, this is just what is needed, but at other times, I think it got in the way of the story. Despite a few problems, I thought THE PIANO TUNER was a lyrical and poetic novel and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. More impressive, however, is the fact that the author is but twenty-six years old and still a student. The book would seem to have been written by someone much older. I will definitely read Mason's next novel provided the subject matter is something that interests me and I do think he's quite talented. I would recommend THE PIANO TUNER to anyone who wants to read a book set in a lush, exotic setting and who can tolerate a slow paced book.
Rating:
Summary: Education Vacation
Review: The two words I like to use to describe this novel are educational and entertaining. The novel's characters and scenery are described beautifully and background is given to the areas the main character, Edgar, visits.
Edgar is a piano tuner who is sent to Burma on a mission by the government to tune a piano. The reason for why the piano is important is what interests the reader the most, and in the end it adds an unexpected twist to the story. Anyone who likes reading something interesting while learning a little also will enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven but interesting
Review: All things considered, it's a good debut novel. Because of uneven rhythm of the narative and unusual (and annoying, I thought) punctuation when writing dialogues I felt there were parts of this novel which the author wrote more out of sense of obligation (to the story) then of true inspiration, almost as if he wanted to skip over them as quickly as he could. For once, the film, if one is made on the basis of the book, might prove to be greater experience than the book itself.
|
