Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435304 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
Beautifully repackaged and republished as part of Flamingo's revitalisation of Philip Hensher's acclaimed backlist: a beautifully crafted tale of the loves, lust and lies of a young Viennese opera singer. 'A very accomplished book indeed, brimming with quality and admirably lacking in tricks or literary artifice...a crisply written story with a nice undertow of irony...there is fine writing on every page. The dialogue is inch-perfect and there are some beautifully mournful descriptive passages.' Sunday Telegraph

Customer Reviews

Sweet
Pretty, whimsical and achingly tender, this is the kind of novel that manages to gently whisper its way right under your skin. The beautiful, emotionally-complicated Friederike leaves her home in Berlin to go and learn to sing in Vienna, but finds herself learning more about the complicated melodies of the heart than she does about vocal technique courtesy of Archy, her equally complicated sometime-lover. The storyline occasionally verges off on a flighty tangent with too many characters and too much family history cluttering the page, and there are times when you end up wishing Friederike would just lighten up. But overall, this is an intelligent summer read - sweet as strawberries with no bitter after taste.