by Sonia OrchardSonia Orchard’s debut novel is inspired by the life of Noel Mewton-Wood, an Australian-born pianist and a prodigy of Sir Thomas Beecham. He first rose to fame in London during the Blitz in World War Two, performing concerts with Beecham and recitals which continued through bombing raids and which helped to galvanize the spirits of Londoners during the darkest days of the war. Sadly Mewton-Wood committed suicide in 1953 at the age of 31 after the death of a lover. The narrator of the novel is a young musician who himself is enthralled by Mewton-Wood’s youthful expertise and beauty. The young man’s longing and obsession for the charismatic Noel are sadly one-sided; the reader is left to endure the narrator’s inevitable decline into melancholy. Sonia Orchard writes beautifully about music, which is at the centre of the novel, and about the hazardous nature of homosexual love in the England of World War Two and the more difficult, puritanical, post-war years when the police were active in the prosecution of such activity. The writing is absorbing; Sonia Orchard reveals the musical and emotional life of a young Australian musician of great promise. Anyone with an interest in music will find the book an absolute joy.
by Chris
