Rating: 
Summary: Lovely book
Review: I agree completely with the Sollami review below. These characters live their lives with great intensity, and great beauty. The absorption and depth of feeling they experience has become unfashionable, and will be medicated out of existence if the Prozac pill-pushers have their way. Mostly, of course, the book is beautifully written, and the accompanying CD serves as a wonderful introduction to chamber music.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent
Review: Beautifully crafted, Vikram Seth's writing is virtuostic. I don't much care for sentimental stories, but this one is delightful to read.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly entertaining
Review: Given that I've read Seth's other novels ("The Golden Gate" and "A Suitable Boy") and was disappointed by both, I wasn't expecting a great deal from "An Equal Music". But it surprised me in that I was taken by the story from the start and I read it very quickly. The only large problems I had with it were where Seth's prose became too self-indulgent, and the times when he lapsed into poetry for no good reason. Yet withal I enjoyed the book.The story centres on the violinist Michael Holme, a member of the troubled Maggiore Quartet, and his attempts to re-establish his relationship with his old love from student days, Julia. The early part of the novel deals with Michael's re-discovery of Julia (but what is her secret?), with the tensions between the members of the Quartet, and as a sub-plot Michael's detective work to find the recording and score of a "lost" piece by Beethoven. I thought that Seth handled these interconnected stories very well, weaving them together skillfully so that I was turning pages quickly, wanting to know the outcome of those stories. Given the setting of the novel and the characters Seth depicts, you have to accept that there is inevitably a large element of preciousness and pretension both within the story and the characters. I could see that this will irritate some readers, but what is also there is the vulnerability and frailty of the people, which evokes sympathy. I thought that the story lost pace in the middle passages, set in Vienna and Venice. Seth tended to overdo the Venetian bits in particular (use of Venice as a backdrop has been done so many times before and so much better - for example in Barry Unsworth's "Stone Virgin" - why couldn't somewhere else have been used?). These parts descend into a sugary style reminiscent of the foul movie "Truly, Madly, Deeply". Yet for all that, Seth did pull the story round in the later parts of the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious for the non-musically inclined
Review: So much information on the music, distracted this musically uninformed reader from the slowly moving plot. However, the suspense built up, despite the rather nonsuspenseful story line. One good point, at least the ending was not predictable, nor was it too neatly wrapped up.
Rating: 
Summary: Some musics are more equal
Review: Vikram Seth's attempt at combining the anatomy of a string quartet with a musical romance is a very mixed bag, to say the least. Bringing his poetic language to prose, he does own a very idiosyncratic and sometimes powerful way to convey emotions and combine them with the beautiful and vivid images of places like London, the small town of Rochdale, Vienna and Venice. The parts of the book dedicated to the string quartet and the musical and personal aspects of it is interesting, even if at times too artificially "learned", as in someone who really did his homework well, in this case, studying the most minute details of chamber music playing - and making sure that everyone understand that. The weakest aspects of this book, at times truly appalling, are the sticky romance with Julia, the pianist with a secret, and the personality of Michael, the narrator himself. One might think that there would be a true tension, or symbiosis, or clash, or whatever, between the two emotional sides of Michael's love - Music Making and Julia. Well, not really. It's a story of obsessive love, and quite an egocentric and intrusive one, which becomes more and more irritating as one reads further on. At the end, the self pity and emotional blindness is so exhausting that it's hard to emotionally follow the fate of Michael. I wish I could enjoy it more, especially after hearing a reading of parts of the book by Seth himself here in St. Paul. Ugh.
Rating:
Summary: A Symphony of a Story
Review: This is another masterpiece from the pen of Indian born Vikram Seth; a beautiful romantic novel centred on a man's lost love which he hopes to reawaken. It is all about love and music...but mainly love. Set predominantly in London but with interludes in Vienna and Venice providing a colourful backdrop to the romance. Michael met Julia in Vienna whilst at music school ten years before. Although the relationship ended with the lovers parting, the fire and flame continued to burn powerfully in Michael's heart. As part of the Maggiore Quartet, violinist Michael is a professional musician who earns additional pocket money by giving private music lessons in his spare time. The various affairs he has are mere shadows of his past love. One day whilst travelling on a London bus he sees Julia on a 94 bus going in the opposite direction. They are face to face only 2 metres apart but she doesn't see him and the buses move on. The embers are rekindled and this is where the story really begins. The ever-present background theme of music, from the appropriate Romantic era, is wonderful. You don't need to know the difference between sharp and flat, major and minor or even arpeggio and vibrato to enjoy the evocative writing of Seth. As the quartet plays Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven and Bach, the music can almost be heard coming through the pages. The love in Michael's heart is all consuming. It is so powerful and self-consuming as to be almost destructive, blinding Michael to all logic and reason. What a wonderful story, so well written and captivating. Few readers would not be moved by the strength of the story line. You live in the hope that events will unfold as you yourself would wish.
Rating:
Summary: an equal music
Review: an equal music touches upon some of the most delicate subjects in creative writing with tender care and gentle skill. seth writes of love, passion, and loss brilliantly and quite flawlessly against the wonderous background of glorious music. although most authors tend to butcher these subjects with purple prose and ideal endings, seth skillfully conveys the story of michael and julia in a realistic setting filled with flowing dialogue and delightful spots of inside humor. the language of an equal music holds the reader captivated by its beauty. the author's choice of words is a remarkable reflection of of the main character's plight. seth uses the less common first person in the present tense narration in harmonious combinations of complex, sing-song poetry with abrupt patterns of short sentences; conveying the instablity of michael's character and placing the reader amidst the turbulence of michael's heart and mind. reasons for his actions, although sometimes seeming absurd or unnecessary to some readers, are clear to any of those who have loved deeply and lost so suddenly as michael did. this is a novel for someone hopelessly in love, whether it is with angels or music.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful in places, but very uneven
Review: As many other reviewers have said, this is a very uneven book. There are parts of it--primarily about music and architecture--that are ravishingly beautiful and lyrical, but the basic plot and the characters are often so annoying that I almost stopped reading. I know that probably Michael's irrascibility and indecisiveness are intentional, on the author's part, and are central to how his life has turned out, but it was very frustrating. I felt great pity for Julia's plight and for the state that she gets herself into (via Michael). However, the gaps in her self-awareness and her own dishonesty made her much less sympathetic.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, tender, tale of love. Exquisite.
Review: The basic plot of this novel by Vikram Seth is simple: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again but with this simple story the author has constructed (perhaps composed would be a more apt word in this case!;-)) a most exquisite and beautiful novel. Mr. Seth obviously loves language and here he uses it to express himself and the emotions of his characters in a poetic and intelligent, meaningful and alluring manner. The images he builds are very powerful and moving and I found myself quickly drawn into this book so much so that I suspended my daily routine just to be able to finish this book! I found myself reading through the night to finish it. The characters Mr. Seth has created are very realistic, vivid and interesting people and ones which you empathise with. The main lead character Michael is beautifully developed as the novel progresses so that one feels his excitement when he meets Julia and his pain when things dont go his way. Julia too is an interesting character, beautiful, talented yet devastatingly handicapped and unsure as well. The secondary characters in this book also add considerably to the novel's depth. As in his work, A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth is at his best when describing scenes and here again his vivid and colourful images of Vienna, London, and Venice are superbly crafted masterpieces of descriptive writing. Of course music plays a major role in this book both in its plot and its aestethic appeal and the book is full choc-a-bloc of descriptions of various pieces of classical music especially the Trout Quintent and also The Art of Fugue and of the perils and joys of playing the violin and the viola. I am immusical (though I do enjoy listening to music) and therefore will failed to have appreciated this aspect of the book properly but it is a measure of how well Mr. Seth writes and his mastery of language that not once was I bored by the technical musical passages. Indeed the book made me interested in learning more about this aspect of music. A joy to read. Tender and exquisite.
Rating:
Summary: Harlequin For Highbrows
Review: I was SO disappointed with this book. I was looking forward to reading it, especially as many reviews compared it to Rushdie's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" (both stories centered around music and both authors from India I guess) but actually finishing this tedious book exhausted me. The interactions and struggles of the Maggiore Quartet, to which our narrator belongs, were mildly interesting but the rest of the book was weighed down with such hackneyed conventions that at times it became unintentionally funny. When Julia's big secret is revealed, when their tormented lives are discussed in toe-curling dialogue, you realize this is pure Barbara Cartland beach reading. If you want a shmaltzy romance then you will love it. If you want to read a good book that is based on the life of a struggling classical musician, read "Grace Notes" by Bernard MacLaverty.
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