Music and Silence - Rose Tremain
Modern writing is still alive! Here is a book by a contemporary author that isn’t smart-arse, self-conscious or written for people who shop in Tescos. Unfortunately it happens to be set in the 17th Century Danish Court and be written by a novelist who’s pen is inspired by the worlds of rural Norfolk, but hey, at least its good, and for more real than the other genre fiction cluttering the shelves of Waterstones.
The reason this is good is because it doesn’t read like a historical book. In a sense it doesn’t read of a book trapped in a time or a setting, because its characterisation is so good and its themes so universal. Ostensibly it is a love story between the lutenist of King Christian IV and the companion of Kirsten, the King’s estranged wife. However, this is by far the lease interesting part of the book, and one that you seem that Tremain has included to shape her historical and lyrical flourishes around. Romantic fiction this is not.
Peter Claire is our lutenist, who takes residence with the King at a crucial moment of his reign, where his initial hopes of creating a new Denmark, expertly crafted and with a distinct lack of shoddiness, are falling apart at the seams. After the fireworks of his early years and dreamlike marriage to the beautiful Kirsten, reality is retuning with a vengeance. Our king’s last bastion of hope lies with his orchestra, and his ‘angel’ Claire, the only place where he is able to feel the music of the soul that he so wanted the rest of the country to reflect.
His nemesis is Kirsten, ex wife and harlot, who dreams of a life of riches and constant coital satisfaction with her new lover, Count Otto Ludwig of Salm. Sat between these two narratives is the state of Denmark, falling with a population who seeks Kirsten’s instant desire, rather than a King’s transcendental world. And due to the realities of economics, neither can be answered,
While the King’s struggles to deal with the realities of power are delivered with the perfect mix of empathy and sardony, and Kirsten extravagances constantly hilarious and foul, Tremain presents us with some even more memorable side characters to the recipe.
Earl O’Fingal – a father, who wakes up in the middle of a dream where he had heard the perfect melody ever composed, and embarks on an obsessive quest to find it again the corporeal world.
Marcus Tilson – the young brother of our heroine Emilia, who is locked away by his parents and left to forge a life with plants and insects, such is the foulness of the human species that he sees before him.
Magdalena – a fleshy, buxom whore of a woman, conveyed through a constant focus on her great, flabby arse and huge sagging breasts. Hers are the sins of the flesh – adultery, paedophilia, incest . We feel drowned in the horribleness of her body the sucks in all around her
The combination of these, a sweet story of love amongst the charicatures of a royal court and a setting where you can feel the crisp Scandinavian snow, taste the lush, creamy puddings of the palace and float around in the futile dreams of a ruler with the true ambition of the Renaissance, gives a story that stays long in the memory. In its treatment of timeless themes in a world of false beliefs and moral nihilism, it also says more about the modern world than the rest of the ‘contemporary fiction’ I have read this year put together.
The reason this is good is because it doesn’t read like a historical book. In a sense it doesn’t read of a book trapped in a time or a setting, because its characterisation is so good and its themes so universal. Ostensibly it is a love story between the lutenist of King Christian IV and the companion of Kirsten, the King’s estranged wife. However, this is by far the lease interesting part of the book, and one that you seem that Tremain has included to shape her historical and lyrical flourishes around. Romantic fiction this is not.
Peter Claire is our lutenist, who takes residence with the King at a crucial moment of his reign, where his initial hopes of creating a new Denmark, expertly crafted and with a distinct lack of shoddiness, are falling apart at the seams. After the fireworks of his early years and dreamlike marriage to the beautiful Kirsten, reality is retuning with a vengeance. Our king’s last bastion of hope lies with his orchestra, and his ‘angel’ Claire, the only place where he is able to feel the music of the soul that he so wanted the rest of the country to reflect.
His nemesis is Kirsten, ex wife and harlot, who dreams of a life of riches and constant coital satisfaction with her new lover, Count Otto Ludwig of Salm. Sat between these two narratives is the state of Denmark, falling with a population who seeks Kirsten’s instant desire, rather than a King’s transcendental world. And due to the realities of economics, neither can be answered,
While the King’s struggles to deal with the realities of power are delivered with the perfect mix of empathy and sardony, and Kirsten extravagances constantly hilarious and foul, Tremain presents us with some even more memorable side characters to the recipe.
Earl O’Fingal – a father, who wakes up in the middle of a dream where he had heard the perfect melody ever composed, and embarks on an obsessive quest to find it again the corporeal world.
Marcus Tilson – the young brother of our heroine Emilia, who is locked away by his parents and left to forge a life with plants and insects, such is the foulness of the human species that he sees before him.
Magdalena – a fleshy, buxom whore of a woman, conveyed through a constant focus on her great, flabby arse and huge sagging breasts. Hers are the sins of the flesh – adultery, paedophilia, incest . We feel drowned in the horribleness of her body the sucks in all around her
The combination of these, a sweet story of love amongst the charicatures of a royal court and a setting where you can feel the crisp Scandinavian snow, taste the lush, creamy puddings of the palace and float around in the futile dreams of a ruler with the true ambition of the Renaissance, gives a story that stays long in the memory. In its treatment of timeless themes in a world of false beliefs and moral nihilism, it also says more about the modern world than the rest of the ‘contemporary fiction’ I have read this year put together.
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