pickI sometimes forget how much I enjoy historical fiction. I loved this; pianos and pianists, Edinburgh, Paris, St Petersburg and beyond, a doomed love affair and a hunted man who is our naive, flawed hero - gripped from start to finish!
pickWandered to take my library book back but can't get used to not being able to browse the shelves.
This was an enjoyable romp set in 1890s abt brodie a yng Edinburgh piano tuner escaping his tyrannical father. Sent to his emplyrs shop in Paris the adventure moves to St petersburg incl a duel, to biarritz, Paris and a small Indonesian island as he pursues a doomed love affair. As always the author crafts a great story and a good ending.
'Look at your love for me. It's blind. You don't see me as I really am. All the many nuances of Lika Blum. The light and the dark. You just see the light. You just see what you want to see.'
"You will have to 'trust to luck'. Is that the right expression?"
"It is, but isn't that life for us all? Trusting to luck?"
"You can always try to give luck a helping hand."
Leftover rice topped with a deconstructed ham and cheese omlette and cucumber! Super excited to start this read.
so-soI've had this ARC on my conscience for far too long. Loved Any Human Heart, Blue Afternoon and Restless.
Brodie is a talented Scot who is promoted to run the Paris office of a piano shop in the 1890s. He falls in love, is diagnosed with TB, and is embroiled in complex office politics. Boyd writes so well; here I never felt the same compulsion to find out what was going to happen, or even care about the characters.
Think I'm missing something?!
Brodie unreflectingly glanced at the Tour Eiffel – he wondered how long you had to live in Paris to ignore it, to take it for granted, like Notre-Dame or the Arc de Triomphe – and noted its summit was obscured by unmoving clouds. It seemed a shame that the whole thing was going to be dismantled in a few years‘ time, but maybe it was too much of a monstrosity for any city to cope with.
Photo: Jorge Gascón on unsplash
so-soI finished reading Love is Blind by William Boyd a few days ago. While I appreciate Boyd as an author and really enjoyed Brazzaville Beach, Sweet Caress, Waiting for Sunrise and Ordinary Thunderstorms, this book was not his best. The story is somewhat ho-hum without the gut-wrenching tension and emotion of his other novels. I did like the classical music connection. It is about a piano tuner in the employ of a famous pianist in the late 1800s.
After getting lost in the vortex of YouTube in the middle of the night... I bought myself a new #audiobook.
so-soThe story is entertaining, but I felt I was missing something... something that would have made it special.
🌟🌟🌟 3/5
bailedI was about 100 pages in and Brodie had been to the whorehouses 4 times, masturbated a number of times and I've read through too many descriptions of breasts and nipples. Pass. Not what I expected from Boyd. 😒 Not what I'm in the mood to read / suffer through right now.
pickAnother excellent novel from William Boyd (well, what else!). Possibly right up there with his Any Human Heart.
See my Goodreads review at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38470168-love-is-blind
#williamboyd #loveisblind #book #books #bookstagram #modernclassic #contemporaryfiction #modernliterature #betterthanallthatbookerprizeshit #fiction #lovestory #music #classicalmusic #piano
Final preparations for a fortnight‘s leave from work. #williamboyd #loveisblind #donnatartt #thegoldfinch #theladyvanishes #book #books #bookstagram #holidayreading #goingtoscotland #booksforscotland
Love Is Blind | 
