Friday 14 September 2007

The Well-Tempered Clavier - and some men on bikes

Just nipped over to Julian Roskams's blog to see what new erudition he had posted since his recent reviews of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard (a book I read time and again in my twenties and urgently need to revisit, though I know it will make me yearn to run away to Italy, so maybe I'd better not) and John Banville's The Sea (which is really, really near the top of my 'to read' pile . . . but). Anyway, imagine my surprise when up popped, not another considered literary appreciation, but some photos of dozens of men in lycra! On bikes! Whizzing through the streets of Malvern . Gosh! It's too early in the morning for that sort of thing.

And speaking of 'to read' piles (of which, in fact, there are several standing around here in precariously toppling states), here's a book which will be added to one of them very soon -
The Well-Tempered Clavier by journalist William Coles. It will be published in late October by Legend Press - an exciting independent publisher of well-reviewed quality fiction, and you can see the author talking about the book here. The title was enough to get me interested, referring as it does to J S Bach's keyboard music of the same name. It's set in Eton College (which wasn't far from my own school and they used to let us use their chapel for performances of major choral works each year), and it's written from the perspective of a fortysomething looking wistfully back to a passionate and unforgettable past love. On the strength of all these ticks in boxes, I have pre-ordered a copy and will review it here in November.

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