Customer Reviews

Piano Players

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4 star:		(1)
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one of Mr. Burgess's unsung masterpieces--perhaps largely due to my love for music. Readers of his "On Mozart" will recognize the idiosyncratic but astute explorations of music theory interjected in the story of a young girl who becomes the brashest "Madame" in France.

Main plot: Dad is a "pianoplayer." This means he improvises the accompaniment to 'twenties silent films on a running-down piano in the town moviehouse. Daughter is a fairly ordinary poverty-stricken girl discovering a fascination with sexuality. The novel is written in her voice, as something of a memoir, and Burgess pulls off the use of distinctively feminie charisma and logic.

The book should take no more than an afternoon or so to read, but the musical/prosaic/cinematic (etc.) pleasures to be gained from that afternoon left me reeling.

I read this book while stranded on a lonely remote island in the South Pacific many years ago. (Was desperate for something to read and found it on a shelf in some Peace Corps office.) Thoroughly enjoyed it and became an Anthony Burgess fan as a result. I consider it to be one of my favorite books, but I'd like to read it again to see if it really was as good as I remember, or maybe desperation and loneliness enhanced the experience. Always on the hunt for a copy when I visit used book dealers. Incidentally, I have no musical talent - so that's not necessary to appreciate the book.

I decided to read Piano Players after I had read A Clockwork Orange, just to get another taste of Burgess's writing. As a "piano player" myself, I thought this book revealed the importance that music plays in everyone's life, and how it can direct one person to go one way (dying in anonymity) or the other (becoming famous for running a bordello).