Then they turned into the gravelled carriage drive of the manse, set in a wide dark garden filled with ornamental conifers – monkey puzzles, larches and cedars – and beech trees. this book offers a fascinating insight into how the instrument works and it also plays with the trope of tortured artistic souls albeit the elements that may seem half-familiar from the lives of genuine classical composers and performers are amplified in the case of the monstrous Kilbarron - if you like, he is John Field gone bad!

From the beginning of the book – concerned as it is with the relationship between life and art, truth and performance – there are hints that Chekhov is going to be important. One of his smart ideas is to sell more concert pianos by offering them, and his tuning services, for free to famous pianists, who will in turn endorse the company. We are told of Brodie’s encounters with prostitutes and he is evidently attractive to women, and generally quite personable and popular. His wife is editor-at-large of Harper's Bazaar magazine, and they currently spend about thirty to forty days a year in the US.What kind of a world would it be where nothing ever went wrong, where everything stayed the same, life followed a designated path – family was adorable, friends and lovers were faithful and true? In a time of strict expectations in social life, Boyd highlights this aspect well in the actions of his character set. I assumed that the flaw in the system would ultimately form a key plot point - but when it didn't it caused me to wonder if the author saw the flaw. Sure enough, after Brodie and Lika embark on a dangerous affair under John Kilbarron’s nose and the “brown, watchful eyes” of his brother, calamity soon arrives, though from a shocking and completely unforeseen quarter.

A particular highlight for me was Boyd's skill in making the era come alive with his rich vibrant descriptions. The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd (edited by Alistair Owen) was published in 2023. The novel teems with extraneous characters and details—visits to prostitutes, an alcoholic brother, a young rich Russian bohemian intellectual. So we shouldn’t perhaps be too surprised that the Lika here in his new novel – also a blonde, buxom, would-be opera singer – is very like the Lika there. This man-on-the-run tale, which wraps up at one exotic end of the Earth, is strangely ageless and very entertaining.

The fact that Moncur is, like Chekhov, a consumptive, is an obvious link, but there are many others, from a plot which can be seen as amplifying the closing lines of Chekhov’s short story ‘The Lady and the Dog’ to a number of other details drawn from Chekhov’s own life. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him. The attraction between Brodie and Lika is instantaneous, but I can’t say that I felt the full force of their overwhelming love.

This commendation drew me to Boyd's new novel, Love is Blind, but I would be very surprised if it caused this year's panel to tary long in their deliberations. We follow Brodie from 1888, when he is eighteen, to 1906, in his mid-thirties, and from Edinburgh to Paris to Geneva to Nice to St. If anything, Love Is Blind moves along too quickly, the narrow focus on Brodie and Lika’s dangerous affair making the story somewhat one-dimensional. It seems a little strange that I have not read this well-respected author’s work prior to Love is Blind.

Exactly what Brodie is doing there is a mystery that will remain unresolved for almost the entire book .