Natasha Solomons - The Song Collector

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific novel

I think this is a terrific novel.  The publishers kindly sent me a copy for review and I enjoyed it enormously – it is thoughtful, humane, touching and very funny at times, and it has important things to say about family, the meaning of home, the difference between artifice and genuine human experience and other things.

The story is narrated by Harry Fox-Talbot ("Fox") in two intercut times: as a young man in the years following the Second World war and as an old man in the years following the death of his wife in 2000.  Fox is a composer and devotee of folk music (the song collector of the title) and its connection to the land and its history.  The story is of Fox's life, his music, his loves and relationships and his fight to save the old family estate in Dorset as the family runs out of money.  Frankly, it doesn't sound that enticing, but Natasha Solomons writes so well and with such clear insight coupled with warmth of heart that I found it completely engrossing.

Solomons writes in lovely, unmannered, readable prose which is a pleasure to read.  She writes wonderfully well about music and has an ear for a striking simile, too, so a cup falls and breaks with "a xylophone crash" for example.  She paints vivid pictures of landscapes and seasons, and her characters are wholly believable.  Their voices, in particular, are exactly right – like the eight-year-old complaining that his mother can't distinguish good piano playing from mediocre because she has "stupid ears."  Fox's narrative voice is pitch-perfect, I think, both as a privileged young man in the forties and fifties and as a grumpy old man in the current century.  It is witty (and laugh-out-loud funny at times), perceptive and exactly right in the language he uses making him completely real to me.  He makes remarks as a young man like "I like the cellist very much, but not when he plays his cello," which tells us a great deal in a few words about both the subject and the speaker.  Then there are genuinely funny but also very perceptive comments from the older Fox on TV talent shows, and the horribly artificial perfection of a Florida retirement community, for example, and the portrait of an old man coming to terms with the modern world, his own mortality and his past is insightful, humane and very affecting.

I could go on, but this review is probably already too long.  I think this book has real humanity and profundity while being utterly engaging and easy to read.  It is funny in places and very moving in others.  I think that Natasha Solomons has established herself as a significant novelist, and I hope this attract the attention it deserves.  I loved it, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.