BECK, Ian:The little Mermaid
- Livres de poche 2009, ISBN: 9780552552264
Vintage. Very Good. 5.08 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches. Paperback. 2000. 464 pages. <br>A bold new novel from the author of Restoration an d The Way I Found Her In the year 1629, a young Eng… Plus…
Vintage. Very Good. 5.08 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches. Paperback. 2000. 464 pages. <br>A bold new novel from the author of Restoration an d The Way I Found Her In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish court to join King Chri stian IV's royal orchestra. From the moment when he realizes that the musicians have to perform in a freezing cellar underneath th e royal apartments, he understands that he's come to a place wher e the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are wagin g war to the death. Designated the king's Angel because of his go od looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman w ho is the companion of the king's adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided, how will Peter Clair e find the path that will realize his hopes and save his soul? W ith a sure, alchemical touch and the narrative finesse that alway s turns her histories into a kind of magic, Rose Tremain has fash ioned a rich, provocative historical romance as pungent as Denmar k's salty air. This is a tale of opposites: light and darkness, t enderness and violence, music and silence. Editorial Reviews Fr om AudioFile English lutenist Peter Claire performs in the royal orchestra of King Christian IV's seventeenth-century Danish court , stirring the hearts of the principal women in this novel. Royal family dynamics are interwoven with love and lust as Claire catc hes the eye of the king and achieves a far-flung influence on a n umber of fronts--his political clout reaches from a widowed Irish countess of Spanish origins to the workers in the Scandinavian s ilver mines. Chapters are interspersed with delicate lute chords, and the alternating voices of the readers animate the narrative of each of the main characters. Feminine and breathy, Alison Dowl ing and Clare Wille give velvety, expressive voices to the female characters' tales. Michael Praed's strong, unaffected speech dep icts the intensity and desperation of the characters he portrays. Mortal danger and the prospect of tragedy build as the narrators deliver their spirited array of voices. A.W. ? AudioFile 2009, P ortland, Maine --This text refers to the audio_download edition. From Booklist Fans of Tremain's historical fiction Restoration w ill delight in her new novel, Music & Silence. The year is 1629, and King Christian IV of Denmark fears that his life is spinning out of control as he watches his royal consort, Kirsten, openly f launt her adulterous affairs and his country fall into ruins. To assuage his misery, he appoints the Royal Orchestra to play in th e freezing cellar of his palace while he listens in the cozy Vint erstue above. Music, the king hopes, will bring the sublime order he craves. His consort, in contrast, detests all music and is fo rever devising Beautiful Plans to rid herself of the king. Caught in the struggle between the forces of music and silence, light a nd darkness, are Peter Claire, the king's lutenist, and Emily Til sen, the royal consort's waiting woman, who try to nurture their love within the treacherous confines of the Danish court. Music & Silence plays both the high and low notes of humanity: it descen ds darkly with lust and betrayal and crescendos with the magic of love and romance. Veronica Scrol --This text refers to the audio _download edition. From Kirkus Reviews Versatile British author Tremain's eighth novel (after The Way I Found Her, 1998) is the s tuff of which fairy-tales are spun, though it also exhibits a com pelling psychological and moral density. The tale begins in 1629 as Peter Claire, a young English lutenist'' whos been summoned to the court of King Christian IV, arrives in Denmark to become the newest member of the royal orchestra. Then, in a skillfully pres ented array of increasingly interlocking narratives (each keyed t o a different character's consciousness), Tremain explores a cons iderable range of human responses to, and involvements with, the overt expressiveness of music'' and the silence'' that pervades h earts and minds given to introversion and secrecy. The tale of Ch ristian's embattled boyhood and sudden ascension to the thronea s ort of Hans Christian Andersen fable of a mind eagerly expanding, then possessively contracting brilliantly dramatizes a hungry sp irit's resolute perfectionism. The confessions'' of Christian's a dulterous consort Kirsten (petulantly recorded in her private pap ers'') vividly portrays an antic superego that thrives on self-in dulgence and subterfuge. And the parallel tale of the love betwee n Peter Claire and Kirsten's favorite handmaiden, Emilia, whos al so been traumatized by a complex legacy of intrigue and lustironi cally echoes the royal drama to which it is gradually, ingeniousl y linked. Not all the connections here work quite so effectively (the story of Danish-born Countess O'Fingal, for example, whose I rish husband is destroyed by his obsession with a heavenly melody heard only in his dreams feels redundant and contrived). But Tre main's deepening characterization of King Christianboth as an inc arnation of acquisitiveness who believes in his own divine right, and a sensitive seeker of higher thingsis masterly and, ultimate ly, very moving. Tremain studied with the late Angus Wilson, and the influence of his fertile imagination has clearly helped shape , and energize, her own. Music & Silence may be her best yet. -- Copyright ?2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Th is text refers to the audio_download edition. About the Author M usic & Silence is Rose Tremain's eighth novel. Her previous work has been short-listed for the Booker Prize and has won the Prix F emina Etranger and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. --T his text refers to the audio_download edition. Review Rose Tremain deserves a hallelujah chorus dedicated to her alone . A decade after the appearance of Restoration, with its superb e vocation of the British baroque, comes her glorious and enthralli ng Music and Silence. Like the earlier novel, this one is a treas ure house of delights--as haunting as it is pleasurable and teemi ng with real and imagined characters, intrigues, searches, and be trayals. The vivid scenes loop in and out, back and forth, like o verlapping and repeated chords in a single, delicious composition . The year is 1629, and King Christian IV of Denmark is living in a limbo of fear for his life and rage over his country's ruin, not to mention his wife's not-so-secret adultery. He consoles hi mself with impossible dreams and with music, the latter performed by his royal orchestra in a freezing cellar while he listens in his cozy chamber directly above. Music, he hopes, will create the sublime order he craves. The queen, meanwhile, detests nothing m ore. The duty of assuaging the king's miseries falls to his absur dly handsome English lutenist, Peter Claire, who resigns himself to his (so to speak) underground success: They begin. It seems to Peter Claire as if they are playing only for themselves, as if t his is a rehearsal for some future performance in a grand, lighte d room. He has to keep reminding himself that the music is being carried, as breath is carried through the body of a wind instrume nt, through the twisted pipes, and emerging clear and sharp in th e Vinterstue, where King Christian is eating his breakfast.... He strives, as always, for perfection and, because he is playing an d listening with such fierce concentration, doesn't notice the co ld in the cellar as he thought he would, and his fingers feel nim ble and supple. Other stories, each of them full of fabulous inve ntion, intertwine with these musical machinations. There is the t ale of the king's mother, who hoards her gold in secret; the torm enting memory of his boyhood friend, Bror; and the romance betwee n Peter Claire and the queen's downtrodden maid, Emilia. And whil e the author paid meticulous mind to her period settings, her tak e on desire and longing has a very modern intensity to it, as if an ancient score were being performed on a contemporary (and surp assingly elegant) instrument. --Ruth Petrie --This text refers to the audio_download edition. Review A magical novel . . . which offers great beauty, great ugliness, great wisdom.--The Spectator Lyrical, voluptuous and pictorially splendid.--The Sunday Times (London) --This text refers to the audio_download edition. From Publishers Weekly As she proved in Restoration, Tremain can writ e literary historical novels whose period details encompass the s ocial and intellectual currents of their time and place. This daz zlingly imaginative, powerfully atmospheric work is set mainly in 17th-century Denmark. One of the protagonists is English, howeve r, and Tremain captures the sensibilities of natives of both coun tries. British lutenist Peter Claire arrives in Copenhagen in 162 9 to join the orchestra of King Christian IV. Depressed after a d oomed love affair with a soulful Irish countess, Peter finds his melancholy mood mirrored by that of the king, who is beset by bot h financial and marital crises. That fruitless wars and profligat e spending by the Danish nobility have depleted the country's cof fers is the king's public woe; privately, his heart is anguished by the behavior of his consort, Kristen Munk, who despises her ow n children, keeps her spouse from her bed and is carrying on with a German mercenary. Recognizing in Peter's handsome countenance a resemblance to a lost childhood friend, Christian declares that Peter is the angel who will help solve his personal and national problems. Tremain's complex plot is built in small increments. E xcerpts from the brazenly selfish Kirsten's diary alternate with the points of view of dozens of others, including Kirsten's lady- in-waiting Emilia Tilsen. Kirsten deems Emilia irreplaceable and prevents her from openly acknowledging her feelings for Peter. Lo ve--requited and thwarted, healthy and perverted, damaging and he aling--is one theme of the novel, represented by six pairs of lov ers. Love is inextricably tied to the power to enslave; perhaps i t's a form of enchantment, of which another manifestation is musi c. Tremain builds her narrative via alternating voices blending l ike the solos of musical instruments. Threading irony among its m any leitmotifs (Christian IV, for example, who understands that m usic can lead to the divine, subjects his musicians to brutal liv ing conditions), the narrative sweeps to a dramatic crescendo, wi th several characters in mortal danger and the prospect of traged y everywhere. Yet it ends in felicitous harmony, a triumph of sto rytelling by a master of the art. 9-city author tour. (Apr.) Cop yright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the audio_download edition. ., Vintage, 2000, 3, UK: Picture Corgi, 2006. First Thus . Soft cover. Very Good. Adapted from the original by Hans Christian Andersen. Colour ills throughout by IAN BECK. Paperback, front edges of covers slightly curled and corners lightly bumped, vg. folio, unpaginated., Picture Corgi, 2006, 3<
