The Piano Tuner, by Daniel
Mason, is the story of Edgar Drake, a piano tuner sent to Burma to fix the
Erard Grand Piano of Surgeon-Major Carroll. Edgar travels from London to India,
where he catches a train, then a boat to Burma, finally travelling through
Burma to Mandalay and on to Mae Lwin in the Shan States where the Surgeon-Major
is stationed. Here he works on the piano while enjoying the peace, beauty and
seductive charms of the idyllic Burmese village. As he grows more nervous concerning
Surgeon-Major Carroll’s unorthodox methods for establishing peace, he
nevertheless falls completely in love with the land and its people. However,
the British Army does not share Edgar and Carroll’s desire for harmony and
understanding, nor their belief in the power of music.
The
front cover of this book promises three things: extraordinary, seductive, haunting.
If these words adorn the front of the book, then the reader is going to expect
just this. Now, it did not quite meet ‘extraordinary,’ but two out of three isn’t
bad, right? Unfortunately, this book made me realise that ‘seductive’ and ‘haunting’
are all very well, but they do not necessarily equate to a great story.
The Journey: Potential for ‘Extraordinary’?
The
book begins promisingly. Edgar is an intriguing character, a little dreamy and
introverted, a little odd, but deeply passionate about music in a way that
convinces the reader to be deeply passionate about music with him. It is very
easy to like him, to feel for him, to sympathise with him. Right from the get-go
he is uneasy about the typical Victorian imperialistic attitude to the East,
and dislikes society’s racist opinions of the ‘Oriental’. He does not like the
army on principal, and sympathises instantly with Carroll because of his
efforts to promote peace. Edgar is a guy we can get behind. This does leave the
question of exactly how Edgar will grow and change on his trip, however. Does
he actually have anything to learn? Might it have been more interesting to see
the more ‘typical’ middle-class Victorian suddenly thrown into Burmese life?
Edgar’s
journey is also promising. He encounters a man on the boat, known as ‘The Man
with One Story’ who launches into a haunting tale of mysticism, magic, and the
devastating power of music. This is meant to complement Edgar’s own journey,
both physical and emotional, but it is slightly unfortunate that this ‘mini-story’
is far more intriguing than anything that happens to Edgar. Still, Edgar’s
journey continues. On the train across India he sees a boy at a station who
wants to sell him a poem, a tale of the leip-bya of Burma. The train pulls away
before Edgar can hear it, but the story of the leip-bya will be visited again later
in the book. Edgar faces other events on his way to Mae Lwin including a tiger
hunt which goes badly wrong, in which he must face his own attitude and realise
that despite his best intentions he is still just another British intruder.
Edgar sees beauty, strangeness, mysticism, violence and oppression. He
sympathises further with the Burmese people. Over the journey the reader has
been taken from the gritty realistic feel of London into a world of magic and ‘otherness.’
Edgar has seen things that bewilder and intrigue him, and is adjusting some of
his own attitudes to become a better person.
Problems and Dreams
Unfortunately,
the book does not stay on a high note for long. In between the beautifully
written moments of awe, or the suggestions of the supernatural, Edgar’s journey
is a somewhat boring list of places reached and then instantly left, like the
author is ticking off points on a map. This is interspersed with a fairly dry
history of the Shan people, followed by an even drier history of Erard Grand
Pianos. Despite Edgar re-assessing some of his preconceptions (such as the
patronising belief that they can ‘bring music’ to a country that clearly has
its own rich musical traditions), he does not really change at all. In fact, he
barely reacts to anything around him. He seems to be drifting along as if in a
dream, letting things happen to him without engaging. He is possibly the most
passive main character I have ever read about.
This
is, perhaps, intentional. Edgar’s entire time in Burma feels like a dream to
him, and he writes home to his wife that he is losing a sense of what is real
and what is only imagined. This connects to the story of the leip-bya, the
Burmese word for a person’s spirit or soul, that flies around moth-like at
night and returns at daybreak. The leip-bya’s nightly excursions are responsible
for dreams. Edgar’s own connection to the leip-bya seems to suggest that he is
also flying around moth-like, experiencing a constant dream from which he
needs, or perhaps can never again, wake up. This is enhanced by references to
the Lotus Eaters from the Odyssey, as well as the story of Gautama. Edgar is
the man who has fallen in love with a dream-land, who has left his wife and
everything else behind to live in an idyllic new land. The reader is never
quite sure if this is a wonderful thing, or a deeply sinister thing.
Haunting and Seductive, but at the Expense of Story and Character?
This
is the strength of the book, but also its failing. Daniel Mason gives the
reader ‘haunting’ and ‘seductive’ in bucketloads. The story is strange,
ethereal and surreal. It never quite feels real, and the constant references to
dreams, illusions and magic, as well as to men lost to other lands, adds a
clever and enjoyable element to this. However, this also means that Edgar never
really steps up and becomes an interesting character. He never does anything, simply observing and
letting things happen to him. His feelings and emotions are therefore unconvincing,
and his extreme love for Burma slightly baffling. He remains so much on one
emotion throughout the whole story that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what
makes him so desperate to stay here.
The
story itself, as well as the setting, also falls a little flat. In an effort to
keep everything feeling so dreamy, the author appears to have neglected to keep
his plotting tight and his descriptions evocative. There are plenty of long,
rambling sentences about what Edgar sees around him, and yet none of these
creates a sense of anything beyond Edgar’s impression of beauty and slight
bewilderment. In other words, we are told that what Edgar experiences is
beautiful and wonderful, but we do not see this for ourselves. I expected lush
descriptions that would make me feel as though I was transported to Burma. I
wanted impressions of what this place feels like, smells like, and sounds like;
I wanted similes and comparisons that could make me feel as emotionally
connected to it as we are informed that Edgar is. I did not get this. In fact,
I cannot picture what Mae Lwin, or indeed Burma, looks like at all. The book
left me with a hazy dream-image, an impression of heat and trees and a river,
but nothing more. This certainly complements the theme and ideas of the story,
but it is disappointing nonetheless.
Daniel
Mason also has a style of writing that began to grate on my nerves a little. He
switches between past and present tense without warning, and seemingly at
random. Sometimes this generates a sense of confusion that connects to Edgar’s
feelings, but more often it feels as though the author simply forgot what tense
he was writing in. At other times, quotation marks indicating speech would
disappear without warning, only to reappear again a few paragraphs later. These
‘quirks’ were, presumably, meant to add to the sense of dreaminess and
disconnect from reality, but I just found them distracting and annoying. To a
certain extent this is what I get for reading a book from the literary fiction
genre (yes, literary fiction is a genre. It can pretend all it wants but it’s
not fooling anyone), but in general I have nothing against this kind of experimentation,
if it feels appropriate. Once again,
too much time spent enhancing the haunting, dreamy air, not enough spent on
good, simple storytelling.
Ending: The High Point
Despite
its problems, The Piano Tuner is perhaps
worth reading for the end alone. Suddenly all the meandering elements of the
story are drawn together and reality kicks in again with a bang. There are
revelations that are surprising and shocking, and a twist-that-could-be-or-not-be-a-twist
that is left for the reader to ponder. The story is left on an ambiguous and
gloriously bittersweet note. It is a tremendous shame that the majority of the
book did not share the same powerful writing and emotional impact as the
ending. This is an ending that I will definitely not forget, even as the rest
of the book fades into dream.
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