The Whitbread Award-winning author of A Good Man in
Africa and the Costa Award-winning Restless now
gives us a sweeping new novel that unfolds across
fin-de-siècle Europe as it tells a story of ineffable
passions—familial, artistic, romantic—and their power to
shape, and destroy, a life.
Brodie Moncur is a
brilliant piano tuner, as brilliant in his own way as John
Kilbarron—"The Irish Liszt"—the pianist Brodie accompanies
on all of his tours from Paris to Saint Petersburg, as
essential to Kilbarron as the pianist's own hands. It is a
luxurious life, and a level of success Brodie could hardly
have dreamed of growing up in a remote Scottish village, in
a household ruled by a tyrannical father. But Brodie would
gladly give it all up for the love of the Russian soprano
Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive—and consort to
Kilbarron. And though seemingly doomed from the start,
Brodie's passion for her only grows as their lives become
increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally,
more dangerous—what Brodie doesn't know about Lika, and
about her connection to Kilbarron and his sinister brother,
Malachi, eventually testing not only his love for her but
his ability, and will, to survive.
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