Product Description

'Fiennes has written a small masterpiece, a tribute to the power of place, family and memory.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13240 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
'One of the finest stylists of his generation and a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.' --Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times

'Brilliant meld of memoir, family history and the sense of what it means to truly care for ourselves, other people and places.' --Metro

'It is a small gem about those important ties that bind.'
--Daily Express

'He writes in an unadorned, simple way and yet still manages to be lyrical. Fiennes really is a talented writer' --Sophie Dahl in The Times

'William Fiennes's memoir of growing up in a rambling old castle. This unusual home and upbringing are evoked with great beauty and poignancy, in ravishing prose, but the book has another, strangely hypnotic effect, enfolding the reader in memories of a child's view of the world that seems universal.'
--Geoff Dyer, Books of the Year, Observer

Review
'That gentle soul William Fiennes... has now written The Music Room, a poignant memoir about the loss of a sibling.'

Review
'William Fiennes writes about growing up in an extraordinary English castle along with his brother, Richard, who had epilepsy.'

Customer Reviews

A beautifully-written memoir almost like a novel
Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire is a 700-year-old stately home which nowadays attracts numerous visitors and film crews. William Fiennes, whose family has lived there for centuries, is a journalist and writer whose previous autobiographical book, The Snow Geese, ended with him returning to Broughton. He has now written his own account of growing up there, in particular with his older brother Richard who suffered from severe epilepsy and was often very difficult and even violent.

If one didn't know otherwise, one might take this memoir for a first-person fiction. It seems to me that Fiennes takes a step back from the specificity of time and place which a factual memoir would emphasise; for example, the phrase "Broughton Castle" does not occur at all. There are many reconstructed conversations which, I suspect, are a long way from pure reportage. It is like an imaginative and beautifully-written novel, interspersed with accounts of past scientific research into epilepsy (complete with a list of sources at the end).

The book covers a roughly 25-year time span, up to the time of Richard's death at age 41, a death which suddenly and unexpectedly intrudes into the narrative by way of a 10-word sentence (which, coincidentally, I reached just hours after hearing the news of young Ivan Cameron). We read how the young narrator grew up with the regular intrusion of film crews and well-known TV stars as part of normal domestic life, and we can imagine his surprise on discovering that most homes do not have such experiences!

This book will be of interest to anyone who has visited Broughton Castle, and to anyone else who enjoys an excellently-written account of growing up in a stately home.

Stylish Elegy
William Fiennes is an author with the award winning Snow Geese already under his belt. This fine autobiographical account of his life with his epilepsy suffering brother will only add to his reputation. The story is rich in detail of the extraordinary early life he shared with his family in a moated castle with all the attendant tasks of guiding tourists, repairing a 700 year old castle, keeping the moat serviceable and all the other tasks that were unknown to those of us who just wanted to live in one. Underscoring this idyll is the brother Rich victim of epilepsy and its inherent mood swings. A history of the medical professions attempts to understand the illness keeps pace with the developing character of Rich. From normal happy go lucky child to increasingly hostile and violent adult, through to the inevitable death from the illness. The story never ceases to fascinate and engage. As a quest to understand the person behind the illness, this truly elegiac story of a lost brother and a hymn to a lost way of life many of us will never experience enthralls from the first to last page.

A Book to Savour
A book to enjoy, beautifully written with delightful imagery. Each chapter is to be savoured, not rushed through but allowed to permeate through your soul.

A book clearly showing the love of parents for a son and a younger brother for his older brother who has severe epilepsy.

I loved the apparent ordinariness of living in a castle, the casual acceptance opening the castle and grounds in the summer for fairs and fundraising events with the resulting hordes of visitors.

The way in which the parents cope with their oldest son's extreme mood swings is amazing and how the younger brother (the writer) did not seem aware of the need to treat him any differently was a tribute to the acceptance of his brother's disability. References to treatment for epilepsy were interesting and some might say it interferes with the enjoyment of the book but I did not find this to be the case.

I have to admit to a longing to have been brought up in this particular castle, the freedom to explore, no protective parents stopping the adventures of the younger son as he fishes or swims in the moat, climbs into the tree house and wanders through the towers and rooms of the castle, sometimes worried about ghosts.

A lovely book to take away on a quiet weekend.