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Music & Silence | 
 enlarge | Author: Rose Tremain
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 3183
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0099268558
EAN: 9780099268550
ASIN: 0099268558
Publication Date: July 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Rose Tremain deserves a Hallelujah chorus dedicated just to her: a decade after the appearance of Restoration--and with a range of stunning novels and short story collections before and after it--now comes her glorious and enthralling Music and Silence. This treasure house of delights, as haunting as it is pleasurable, teems with characters, real and imagined; with intrigues, searches, betrayals, in vivid scene after scene which loop in and out, back and forth, like overlapping and repeated chords. King Christian IV of Denmark is, in the year of 1630, living in a limbo of fear and rage for his life, his country's ruin, and his wife's not-so-secret adultery. He consoles himself with the weaving of impossible dreams and with music--played by his Royal Orchestra in the freezing cellar at Rosenborg while he listens in his cosy Vinterstue above. Music, he hopes, will create the sublime order he craves. Kirsten, his devious wife, is a continual maker of Beautiful Plans to outwit, avenge, feed her greed. And she detests music. The awkward duty of assuaging the King's miseries falls to his English lutenist, Peter Claire, his "Angel", whilst Emilia Tilsen must bend to Kirsten's every whim. Yet what Peter and Emilia seek is each other, largely in silence both necessary and cruelly imposed. Other stories, each of them full of fabulous and often joyful and witty invention, intertwine through the Royal Court's machinations: the King's mother who hoards her gold in secret; his boyhood friend, Bror, a tormenting memory; the villagers who suffer and wait in the frozen Numedal; Emilia's mute young brother Marcus. And in Ireland, Johnnie O'Fingal, once a kind father and husband, is driven mad by hearing music of utter divinity in his dreams, but which neither he nor Peter Claire can make earthbound. His devoted but spirited wife has distracted herself with Claire, but now finds herself rejected. Palpable with desire and longing, this extraordinary narrative builds its grand themes in storytelling that is both profound and wonderfully satisfying. --Ruth Petrie
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
Gorgeous December 22, 2008
A broad, rich tapestry of a novel, brimming with interconnected characters. My favourite must surely be the spoilt and outrageous Kirsten who sizzles and crackles from the page, she's so alive. This novel succeeds in being both lyrical and philosophical, while still having an onward thrusting plot full of mystery and intrigue.The last few pages had me waiting with bated breath.
Everything a really wonderful novel should be.
 stunning September 11, 2008
One of the most absorbing reads this summer. I was completely captivated by this beautifully written historical novel.
An imaginative entry into a little known world August 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book opens in 1629, when Peter Claire, a young English lutenist, arrives to take up his post as a musician at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark. It then moves in a series of flashbacks and forward movements from this moment, both for Claire and for the King; for Kirsten Munk, the King's morganatic second wife; for Emilia Tilsen, one of Kirsten's young maid-servants; for the Countess O'Fingle in Ireland, whose husband is tortured unto madness by a tune he once heard and cannot recapture; for Marcus, Emilia's waif-like little brother; for Johann, her father in Jutland; and for the Rev. James Claire, Peter's father in Suffolk. For each of these characters Rose Tremain has created a distinctive style and voice, each a pleasure to read. She has great descriptive powers of people, place, and atmosphere. The personalities also, and the shifting relationships between them, are very distinctive: there is the huge, restless and tormented king, strangely confiding in Peter Claire; a truly monstrous regiment of women: the termagant and adulterous Kirsten, twenty-two years the King's junior, ruthlessly selfish and bullying all her attendants except for Emilia; Ellen Marsvin, Kirsten's mother; Sofia, the Queen Mother; and Magdalena, Marcus' wicked stepmother. Almost all the characters in the book are unhappy, and an air of sadness suffuses the whole novel.
Christian IV and Kirsten are certainly historical figures, as is the King's later mistress, Vibeke Kruse. Many times one feels sure that descriptions of the Danish court are based on historical research, as probably are the superstitious beliefs held by some of the characters. Personally I would have liked to know which of the other characters are inventions: Bror Brorson, for instance, Christian's boyhood friend and favourite who cannot read or write and who is banished for years from the court during Christian's minority: was there such a person? If he and others are invented, they are a great tribute to the richness of Tremain's imagination.
The energy of the book seems to me to flag somewhat in the second and third part of the novel, and there is some meandering; but it builds up to a tense ending and remains a remarkable achievement.
I am Danish myself October 7, 2004
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I am Danish myself, and tremain opened my eyes for many things and exellent details about his reign, things i've never heard before.
I was amazed by the book, it was very intense all the way....I only one small thing i would like to comment... Sweden is, in music and silence,placed on the other side of Oresund...
That is incorrect;the other side was danish untill 1658, when it became swedish and never returned to Denmark again!!!
Brilliant January 31, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Probably one of the best books I have read in years. I didnt want it to end. Every page painted a picture and the story kept you clinging to every word.
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