As seen in this weekends Spectrum from the bestselling author of The Snow Geese – William Fiennes, comes a mesmerizing tribute to an adored older brother – The Music Room.
When William Fiennes was a small boy, his parents inherited an extraordinary home: a castle full of history, secrets and strange artefacts, the perfect hunting ground for child with a brimming imagination.
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The family set about welcoming visitors actors, musicians, travelling fairs, members of the public but behind these very public scenes a more intimate drama was taking place. William’s older brother, Richard, had been diagnosed with severe and debilitating epilepsy.
Within the enchanted world of the house, Richard is a powerful presence: radiating wit, beguilingly eccentric, and yet also the victim of dark and violent moods. The two brothers are devoted, yet as William grows ever more independent, ever closer to leaving this idyllic home Richard’s life becomes increasingly circumscribed. One day Will receives a phone call: Richard died this morning. Come and join us. The Music Room captures a child’s wide-eyed wonder and an adult’s grief. Its incantatory prose builds a house that is almost sentient, a landscape bursting with life, and a family animated by generosity and strength. Utterly unique in its sensibility, minutely detailed and tenderly observed, it is not an elegy but a sensory tribute to home, to the workings of memory and imagination, and, above all, a transcendent lovesong for a brother.
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