The Piano Tuner

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical Depiction of Burma
Review: I picked this book up as I was attracted by some reviews on the rear of the book that it contains lyrical prose. You know how difficult it is for good prose that seemingly flows like smooth silk to come by and let alone in a story of bygone days.

I was not disappointed as David Mason showed a mature hand in describing the forest, the mountains. rivers, people, culinary delights, religious sites in such a rich language. I could hardly believe that this is his debut novel and agree with a review (on the rear of the book) that this book will be good substance for a movie: I could almost see it materialising in a Merchant Ivory production...

The storyline is fairly complex though at first glance, is simple for it is the story of the journey of an English piano tuner near the turn of the last century to Burma to repair an Erard piano deep in the Shan States. This piano was the reason that Edgar Drake took the task but as his journey unfolds, he was dragged into other matters such as exploring the life a fairy-tale like account of how a man lost his hearing, attending a military gathering and imposing as a lieutenant, the life and the relationship between a charming woman and the owner of the piano et al.. Needless to say, he was mesmorised by the beauty of Burma and fell for the woman who was meant to be his lady guide for the journey. The story is full of equally complex characters: Katherine (Edgar's wife, why did she allow Edgar to go to such a faraway place to repair a piano: an act of wifely understanding?), Anthony Carroll (the doctor whose acts of kindness to the villagers was negated by the revelation of that he was a spy, why did he do so- out of love for the country or sheer hunger for personal power?), Khin Myo (did she not have genuine affection for Edgar?) and many more. These questions left pondering after I have finished reading the book.

In the process of following Edgar's journey, I had an appreciation of the culture of Burma and have a sudden urge to visit the place. The places have such beautiful names: Mae Lwin for one has a musical intonation.

Overall, a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Travel in Time, Space and Mind
Review: Uncharacteristically, I LISTENED to this book as an Audible.com download on my trip up (1/2) to Cape Cod from Westchester, NY, and back down (1/2)...5 disks in all.

I knew nothing of the book before I listened to it. I found it to be transporting...I was there, visually, emotionally. The detail of a pre-turn-of-the-century trip from London to the remotest regions of Burma was glittering and compelling. The repeated turning of attention to individuals' stories -- while it became a bit predictable later in the book -- revealed the craft and depth of this storyteller's intelligence. The book is about: time; estrangement; the nature of reality; the craft of the story; transcendence; geography; our concrete world. I loved it.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my impressions.

Rating:
Summary: Slow, but captivating view of exotica of yesteryear.
Review: If you, like me, have a fascination for exotic locales which are quickly disappearning from our modern world, this is a fine book for you. It begins in an old-fasioned London in the mid 1800s as an ordinary man who tunes pianos is plucked from his humdrum life and asked to travel halfway around the world to tune a piano in a jungle outpost. The London scenes are beautifully portrayed, along with the touching relationship the piano tuner shares with his wife. His journey to the jungle-bound piano is a fascinating one, but the best parts of the book take place when Edgar (the tuner) becomes so mesmerized by his surroundings in the Shan States that he just lazes around, his seductive inertia holding him there for several months. The ending just kind of fizzles out, but there was a lot to like in this often beautifully written book. I'm amazed that the author is not first and foremost a writer (he's a medical student) and hope that he finds time to write another book!

Rating:
Summary: Book of the year
Review: A mesmerizing story replete with insights into self discovery,
music, creativity, colonialism and appreciation of foreign culture.
Exceptionaly well written with gorgeous passages which dramatically underscore the musical theme.
The descriptions of Burma and Victorian England remind one of George Orwell.
Impossible to put down with a torrid conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Dense, but worth it
Review: Beautiful writing. This is one multi-talented young man. And humble (in person), too, so what's not to like?
Well, the beginning was long-ish, and the end seemed to come on too quickly. The middle was perfect.
Interesting way of writing dialogue that I've never seen employed before, all in a single paragraph with only commas separating what one speaker says from another. In Mason's capable hands, it works well.
Give it a try, pass it on to a friend, and look forward to his next book - after he graduates from medical school in 2 years!

Rating:
Summary: Great First Novel
Review: Rarely are first novels as good as this one. Mason takes us from the city of London through the jungles of Burma with ease and a vividness that suggests his acquaintance with the area. Beyond that, he recreates the Victorian era with its quirks and lust for empire that has the flavor of the best of the Victorian novelists though his prose is somewhat less dense (and rich) than a Dickens or Hardy.

This novel tells the story of a British piano tuner who is recruited by the British army to travel from London to Burma to tune a piano for an eccentric but successful British officer at a remote outpost. This is the novel in a nutshell but, of course, my description does little justice to the well-crafted characters--in addition to the tuner & commander there are a number of fascinating encounters with the likes of the Man with One Story (my personal favorite) and Khin Myo, the tuner's enchanting helpmate in Burma. It also does little justice to the varied way Mason lets the plot of the novel unfold.

I am particularly pleased that Mason is able to avoid any simple answers to the large issues he addresses. I was sure I had an idea about how this novel was going to end and it played quite against my expectations. This is a rare quality for me to find in any novel and I enjoy it immensely.

I did find the end of the story to come rather suddenly and in a bit of a rush. Because of that, I was somewhat disappointed but I feel I understood Mason's reasons so that softened the blow a little bit. It's almost as if he realized that if he didn't end the novel soon it was going to become so enmeshed and complicated that even he wouldn't have been able to work it out. As it is, he stopped himself in time to create a delightful novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Dense Disappointment
Review: I wanted to enjoy this book. The first few pages demonstrate that Mason is a more than capable writer, his sentences poetic and his tone believably 19th century. But very quickly it is apparent that this is going to be a long haul. The characterizations are flat. Dr. Carroll is a huge letdown when he finally makes his appearance (actually, he's absent most of the time even after his entrance), and Mr. Drake so quickly devotes himself to this milktoast Svengali that the reader concludes he never had a self to lose to the mysteries of Burma. The book ultimately feels like a depository for every fact about Burma that Mason was able to scrape up in his year of research there, thus he succeeds in creating a lush stage for the action but unfortunately casts his story with puppets.

Rating:
Summary: Exotic, Lyrical, Captivating
Review: A quiet, bespectacled, home-bound English piano tuner is sent into the wide, wonderful, exotic world of 1886 in this outstanding first novel by Daniel Mason. Specifically, his job is to repair an out-of-tune piano which has somehow preceded him into the jungly wilderness of Burma, but in general he experiences the world as it was then, particularly that part of it at the furthest outpost of the British Empire. Thanks to the author's careful attention to detail, derived unquestionably from his own overawed sense of wonder, we get to experience it too.

With the piano tuner, Edgar Drake, we see the coast of Africa one hot morning off the starboard side of his ship; we sail through the Red Sea; we disembark in Bombay, then make the overland journey across India; and finally there is Burma from Rangoon to Mandalay to the final destination in the wilds of the Shan states, Mae Lwin.

Mae Lwin, with its children playing in the river, its tattooed men, its women with their strangely beautiful, lined "thanaka" make-up. Mae Lwin, built on the side of a mountain, with stairs slanting everywhere connecting its buildings. Mae Lwin, surrounded by a jungle filled with butterflies, flowers, snakes, mosquitoes, heat, sheeting rain, and various birds such as parrots, mynah birds and kingfishers. It is so exotic that we, like our besotted piano tuner, become enraptured by it.

But beyond this the novel is a pretty good intrigue also. The British, you see, had to be concerned with the French incursion into Indo-China, and also the never-ending Russian menace. The fierce Han warriors in the region had to be subdued either through alliance or war. Our piano tuner, summoned to Burma for a reason, suddenly finds that piano tuning is only one of the missions in which he is to engage.

There is also the beautiful and delicate Khin Myo, who initially is his guide, but who eventually becomes something much more to him. "Stay away from matters of love," his superior tells him.

Finally, with the exotic locale as its backdrop, the plot functions as a metaphor for the journey we sometimes take outside ourselves. The search for beauty and truth is not always a straightforward and easy one; there are many distractions along the way. Indeed, the signs can be confusing, and one can become lost.

This excellent novel exhibits a bit of clumsiness here and there, particularly with some early narrative exposition, but on the whole this is a fine, well-written, almost lyrical first effort. May there be more.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: A beautiful story. The historical content is fascinating and the descriptions of Burma are compelling. I was captivated by the story and was sad for the book to end. An amazing novel that deserves to be in the top 10 bestsellers.

Rating:
Summary: An Extraordinary Eye For Detail
Review: Daniel Mason has written an amazingly sensitive drama of a time when the British extended their Asian empire at the end of the 19th century. An eccentric army doctor has successfully established the farthest outpost in the Shan States, east of Burma. He has now sent a most unusual request to British headquarters.
Mason shows us Asia as seen through the eyes of Edgar Drake, a mild-mannered piano tuner who never before ventured outside England. He lets us to absorb the exotic local scenes slowly, one by one, as Edgar accustoms himself first to the colonial British, then to Burma, and finally to the culture of the untamed Shan Plateau and its rulers, and the outpost of Mae Lwin.
It is hard to realize that the young author has gathered his knowledge from only a year on the Thai-Burma border. Mason has an extraordinary eye for detail, and a hypnotic narrative style that can blend dream with delirium with enchantment.
The pace is slow at times. But that is the nature of Burma, where one must wait for the rains, wait for an official's decision, and wait for the right moment to act.