The Music: STORIES ABOUT MUSIC

James Hamilton-Paterson is surely one of the most eclectic and versatile writers working today. The Briton has written two superb books of non-fiction, Playing with Water (about his experiences living on a remote Philippine isle in the 1970s) and The Great Deep (a collection of ruminations and historical asides on the sea), several volumes of poetry, and the novels Gerontius and Ghosts of Manila. In this, his second collection of short stories, his locales and characters are scattered all over the globe: an American pianist giving a recital in China, a clandestine political meeting in Libya, a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a music censor in Eastern Europe, a young Filipina musician forced into prostitution. Music, particularly the high classical forms of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, provides the central themes for each story. Mozart even shows up, reincarnated as a Nigerian cardiac surgeon attending a conference in Malta. It's a daring, idiosyncratic collection, pulled off with great aplomb by a distinctive composer of prose.

In 1989, Hamilton-Paterson won wide recognition for Gerontius, his novel of Edward Elgar's journey up the Amazon. Now, in a virtuoso performance, he once again uses his love of music to unify these tales. These are entertaining and original variations on such themes as the nature of art, the wellspring of creativity and the evanescence of genius set in a variety of far-flung places, from the Philippines to North Africa. In "The Last Picnic," an escaped lunatic who says he is Schumann interrupts a family picnic, leaving behind a sad, fantastic memory that haunts a small child. In "Knight," an aristocratic major held as a POW in North Vietnam remains steadfast in the face of all kinds of torture, but in a final, dreamlike sequence he finds himself sitting outside the home of an amateur musician whose playing of Bach brings the major to tears; "Suddenly the possibility of staying alive was hugely precious.... Being a knight was not the only way of spending a life." The issue of creativity is raised in "Farts and Longing," one of a two-century-long series of interviews between the narrator and Mozart. In a crescendo of complaint, the querulous Mozart decries critics' inability to comprehend the act of creation, and the way Mozart's music, like his farts, come from a yearning to squeeze out his strongest essence. Like links in a chain, these stories work together beautifully, gaining strength from their unifying theme and Hamilton-Patterson's superb writing.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As the title suggests, 15 stories with musical themes. Finely wrought, and ranging from the profound to the whimsical, they're more pianissimo than con brio. British writer Hamilton-Paterson, whose Gerontius (1991), a novel about the composer Edward Elgar, won the 1989 Whitbread Prize, here lyrically evokes the quirky and sometimes darker aspects of the muse. In ``Farts and Longings,'' a writer keeps meeting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in various incarnations; in his most recent manifestation, Mozart is a conference-bound Nigerian doctor who discusses with the writer his use of the scatological language that shocked the music world when his letters were made public. It was, he asserts, intended as a reflection of the politics of the repressive times in which he was composing, rather than as a symptom of any personal pathology. In ``The Last Picnic,'' another celebration of the quirky, a madman believing himself to be Robert Schumann escapes from a nearby asylum and has a disquieting effect on a family gathered to mourn their mother as he gives a convincing interpretation of some Schumann pieces. In ``Records,'' the close friendship of two young men, a friendship ended by marriage, is represented by a shared collection of records; and in ``Frank's Fate,'' a man in Italy to clear up a minor writer's estate discovers an essay by his deceased friend on the fate of a now-forgotten 18th-century musician that is a surprisingly moving meditation on genius and fame. Two other notable stories add a political shading to the musical theme: In ``Jaro,'' a middle-aged Italian woman gives lodging to a young refugee from Yugoslavia, a talented guitarist in flight from the miseries of the Bosnian war; and in ``People's Disgrace,'' a composer in a totalitarian country who specializes in discovering the hidden messages in music unwittingly causes the death of his best friend. No wrong notes or hackneyed refrains, just intelligent stories deftly done but without much lingering resonance. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.