IOD Edizioni, 2024
410pp. €24.00
ISBN 979-12-81561-26-7
We are not very often asked to review works of fiction, but when the author reached out to me on Facebook, I decided that it was worth giving it a go.
I’m very glad I asked him to send a copy. What started off as something with which I could thoroughly identify as the book’s first-person narrator, a young horn player called Edu Maia, struggled with performance anxiety. Brilliant in class and dedicated to hours of study and practice to the exclusion of almost everything else, he just cannot stand up in front of anyone critical and perform.
Without giving away the story, he is the victim of various near-death experiences, yet finds enlightenment through a stranger and proceeds – with unexpected support, moral and financial – to attempt the most ambitious project imaginable in some sort of Utopian universe. In other words, the novel turns from psychology to philosophy. It is not long, however, before we are drawn back to the dark side, and the denouement was totally unexpected. And provoked quite a few questions!
Although musicians will perhaps get more from the piece than non-musicians, I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good read.
La Vita della Musica was originally published in Italian in 2022. The translation is very readable, but something happened when importing the text into the desktop publishing program that sometimes caused two lines to run together – I wondered who “Palestrinato” on p. 271 was, until I realised that it was two words… There are also typos, but that’s the case in most books (even huge series like Harry Potter are not immune!), and it’s all the more forgivable here for not being the author’s mother tongue.
These trivial slips did not detract in any way from a gripping story, and a journey through what music is (or could be?) about. I commend it highly.
Brian Clark
The novel is available from amazon.co.uk
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