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| The Piano Tuner | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel Mason
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (27) from £0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 16643
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0330492691
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780330492690
ASIN: 0330492691
Publication Date: January 2, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Little River Books dispatch daily from South Wales. Customer satisfaction is our guarantee.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Audio CD version October 23, 2008
I listened to the Audio CD, narrated by Graeme Malcom, which does not seem to be listed on Amzon.co.uk.
There was some abridgement in my version, possibly of some of the language that has slowed readers down in the early stages of this book.
Edgar Drake, a piano tumer in the late nineteenth century, is entrusted with the task of travelling to remote ares of Burma to tune a piano. The piano belongs to Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, a doctor who appears to be negotiating peace through music.
We join Drake on his journey from England, over land and water, meeting some interesting characters on the way. But it is on arrival at the fort of Mae Lwyn, his destination, that the story begins to gather momentum. As he tunes the piano, events are escalating in the surrounding area and he becomes drawn in unwittingly.
The denouement was a surprise and I'm still not sure if I found it clever or disappointing, it was certainly food for thought.
I found the CD beautiflly evocative of the sights, sounds and smells of Burma, a place I have read little about.
I have a copy of the book on my shelves and may well read it again, meanwhile I'll be on the lookout for his recently published "A Far Country".
 Good or bad? I can't decide... September 21, 2008
I can't quite decide if I liked this or not. It really depends on whether the plot of a book is important or whether it's the atmosphere and tone. This book doesn't have a great deal of plot - Victorian piano tuner travels to Burma to tune a piano - but it's wonderful at evoking the sights and sounds and smells of Burma. And I liked the ambiguity of it and how it doesn't end tidily with everything wrapped up.
 Journey to the heart of, er, blast! I've forgotten! July 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Oh how worthy an enterprise and how promising a beginning! Yet, how many worthy enterprises have begun well only to run out of ideas and, ultimately, steam? If the preposterousness of the initial premise doesn't put you off - the British Army sending a piano tuner to the far reaches of empire - in this case, the road to Mandalay - just to comply with the eccentric caprice of a supposedly indispensable martinet - then you do get some enjoyment from the first hundred or so pages. However, suspicions begin to set in when, for example, our hero tuner meets, during one stage of his mammoth journey, a bizarre `native' who relates to him, what the reader supposes to be a portentous tale only for this to prove to have been something of a `red herring'! So the first signs of irritation become apparent and as our Marlow-like hero penetrates further into the unknown along the Irrawaddy, a la, Heart of Darkness, he eventually meets his Kurtz who turns out to be something of a bore! The one hope the reader has is that the enigmatic guide, a beautiful Burmese woman, for whom Drake, the tuner, develops an infatuation, actually becomes his lover, simply to make the story more interesting.
Ultimately nothing of any interest does develop, not even the dreary Drake and the prose, initially, quite commanding and sure, becomes, along with the `story', merely turgid, extremely irritating and, ultimately, deeply disappointing.
Apparently it's to be turned into a film to be directed by, wait for it...yes, so, so predictably, Werner Herzog!
 A tale with a twist - well worth persevering with June 28, 2008
I found this book hard to read at first - in fact I started it more than a year ago and abandoned it half way through. Last week I picked it up again and found the second half absolutely gripping. I finished it last night and this morning when I woke up I lay in bed for a while thinking about the book and the strange ending, and suddenly the penny dropped and I was stunned. I don't want to give too much away to anyone who hasn't yet read it, but there's more to it than what it appears to be on the surface, and not everything is as it seems. I re-read different sections and there are hints to what is really going on, such as the talk of the nature of reality - think about what the author was doing while he wrote the book...then of course I could be wrong!
This is an amazing, intelligent, mature story, and vividly descriptive. One of the best books I have read and I can highly recommend it.
Difficult but rewarding July 30, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
At first I found it hard to get into this book. I started reading it expecting an adventure story, and though there is some action involved (precious little however), that is perhaps the wrong way about it. Perhaps the best way to read it is let yourself be immersed in the rich, lyrical language, almost as if you would read a poem.
The plot reminds of `Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad: in this book too an individual sets out to find a military commander, living in a remote area of an Asian state occupied by a Western country. Apart from that however, the difference could not be bigger, `The piano tuner' is almost a mirror image of `Heart of Darkness'. Whereas the latter focuses on the dark side of the human mind, the former concentrates (in beautiful language, I cannot help but repeat), on the beauty of the Shan states and its inhabitants. Edgar Drake (the piano tuner of the title) opens his heart to this beauty, with unexpected consequences.
One to savour!
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