Jim Crace - The Melody (2nd Hand Paperback)
Synopsis
A novel about love and grief, music and myth, and about the way society treats its least fortunate.
Alfred Busi, famed and beloved in his town for his music and songs, is now in his sixties, mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days alone in the large villa he has always called home. The night before he is due to attend a ceremony at the town's avenue of fame, Busi is attacked by a creature he disturbs as it raids the contents of his larder.
Busi is convinced that the thing that attacked him was no animal, but a child, 'innocent and wild', and his words fan the flames of old rumour - of an ancient race of people living in the bosk surrounding the town - and new controversy: the town's paupers, the feral wastrels at its edges must be dealt with. Once and for all.
As Busi's nephew's ambitious plans for himself and the town develop, he is able to fan the flames of rumour and soon Busi and the town he loves will be altered irrevocably.
The Melody by Jim Crace is a story about grief and ageing, about reputation and the loss of it, about love and music and the peculiar way myth seeps into real life. And it is a political novel too - a rallying cry to protect those we persecute.
It is lyrical and warm, intimate and epic, a powerful future classic.
Details
- Format : Standard 2nd Hand Paperback
- Condition : Very Good (Almost As New)
- Category : Fiction - Fiction - Uncategorised
- Published : 2019 (Picador)
- ISBN : 9781509841387
- SKU : B001991
- PPC : LL300gm
- RRP : £8.99
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
"A myth, an old tale with wolves at the door, a bestiary; a ghost story, an elegy, a psychologically astute self-portrait; a moral allegory in which halos are obscure rings of darkness . . . an ecological fable for our times" - The Guardian.
The Author
James Crace is an English writer and novelist. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.
