While the Music Lasts by Alice McVeigh

This is a beautifully-written novel about characters in a London orchestra. Indeed, Alice McVeigh conducts her finely wrought characters like an orchestra, and her musical past lends authenticity to the portrayal. They include self-destructive and passionate Isabel, her married older lover William deeply attached to his disabled wife, unpopular David, sensible Caroline and innocent Elinor . Alice includes fictional diaries of some of these people, for example, the gay and mercurial Piotr, which helps them to come alive.

She has an extremely eloquent way of describing the  scenes and the people in this book. For example, she   writes that Elinor Jay ‘was a romantic. A personal assistant by day, in one of those anonymous City firms whose activities, while pumping the lifeblood of the economy, make for dull reading, she became, by night, the captive of her own lively imagination’. She sums Elinor up by a succinct choice of words!

The only description which annoyed me was that of Mirabel, a mannish, blunt Australian woman. This seems to be a stereotype in some English novels! She was likeable enough, but this got on my nerves.

I found this to be more of a character study than a novel but I didn’t mind that. I am anxious to read the sequel now.

I received a free copy of this ebook through LibraryThing.

Excerpt from

While the Music Lasts

Alice McVeigh

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0

This material may be protected by copyright.