Sunday, January 31, 2010

Book News

Prince Albert Public Library

This book I recommend...

Night Music is the recently published sixth book of British author Jojo Moyes. A great story line with credible characters and unusual plot puts Moyes’ book on par with those of Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher.

“For her the house was a lifeline. For him it was revenge...” says the front cover subtitle and that explains the story rather well. The main “character” in the book is a dilapidated lakeside house in Norfolk, with a Georgian redbrick façade and Moorish elements. Not yet a ruin, it has mouldered into dereliction through neglect when it comes, unexpectedly, into the possession of Isabel and her two children.

Isabel is principal violinist with a prestigious London orchestra, when her French husband dies and leaves her “in the cactus” so to speak. Unless Isabel parts with her magnificent Guarneri violin, the nanny, private schools and their Maida Vale house must go. “I don’t do figures,” Isabel announces when confronted with a tottering pile of unopened accounts. So it’s up to her efficient 15-year-old daughter Kitty and eight-year-old son, Thierry, mute since his father’s death, to sort things out.

Meanwhile a local Norfolk family, certain the house would be left to them, are less than delighted at this turn of events. Throw in Byron, a man with a mysterious past and empty future, along with Nicholas, a desperate developer and you have all the ingredients for a great read.

Especially if you’ve ever had the builders in...

Review by Barbara Castle-Farmer

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