Love is an emotion so complex yet so striking, powerful yet so healing that it has inspired men of all walks of cultures and hues of art forms to express it in their works in ways more then one. It soothes, it rejoices, it gently caresses and its soft gentle touch has the power to make a stone melt.
One who has found love in his/her life would be the happiest person, but as I say so, it also has the power to drive sane men to the limits of distress. Didn?t someone say everything is fair in love and war.
If love can charm it can scar as well, it is such a feeling that those in love wouldn?t want to come out of and those out of it would never understand why the brouhaha. Love is a feeling so sweet, so warm that it can light a hundred candles of radiance on the darkest of nights, so musical that Mozart would sound out of sync, so tender that the choicest pashmina feels like a torn rug. Love is a feeling beyond comprehension; beyond imagination and the sheer idea of expressing it in words is a farcical notion. They say if love be the music of life let it play on , so play on it is.
It is love and the essence of its vibrancy and its spell over the heart, which is captured so strikingly in the piece of my attention, the subject of my review. The symphony of love and the joyous sounds of the heartbeats is the theme of a romantic mind, and Vikram Seth comes through at once as a daydreamer and a charming sorcerer, ready to cast his spell on each of you who possesses a romantic soul. The title of this book is taken from one of John Donne’s sermons and is a description of life after death, well ladies and gentlemen let me present to you An Equal Music.
An Equal Music is a tour de force of poetic, impassioned writing. It is an unforgettable tale of love lost and nearly regained. It is a story of the force of love, its magical spell over the heart and its forceful impact over the mind. It is a poignant saga of love and lovelorn lovers torn apart by circumstances and how a strange quirk of fate sees them come together again. The common strand that connects the lover is their passionate love for music. It is a love story blended with the strokes of a Mozart piano, synced with a Bach harmonica and a Schubert violin. It is a treat for the connoisseur and the laity, the lover and the ignorant, the classes and the masses.
An Equal Music is a tale of the romantic in each one of us, about the lover who is passionate about the love of his life and about the possessed mind who is not willing to let go of it at any costs. It is the saga of the spell of love over the heart and how it makes you sway to its tune. It is a story to savor and one to feel for with compassion, and one that transforms you to the realm of charming things. If it is charming, it?s also painful and cathartic at the same time. It is a fable of their times together and yet a powerful narration of the heartbreak of theirs and how they go through their lives torn apart, leading their own lives, yet keeping the fire of their love alive in their hearts. The longing of the central characters for each other and the void feeling of listless life that they are leading without each other, strikes the reader as a bolt. It leaves you spellbound with the sparkling radiance of their joyous love, while at the same time it leaves you with a piercing pain in the heart with their parting.
An Equal Music is the musical journey of Michael Holme through contemporary London to Vienna to Venice in quest of euphony and in his search for the love of his life. It is the poignant tale of Julia Mac Nicholl, who loves Michael as passionately as her music, only to be separated from him through a twist of events. The two disembark on their own ways of life, only to meet again after many years. Time and distance might have stood between them, but nothing could diminish the power of their love. Michael felt a void, a note missing in his music without Julia in his life. Julia on the other hand married to someone else could never sever Michael from her mind.
An Equal Music is the tale of their love for music, their passion for each other, and the strange quirk of fate which draws them closer only to sever them forever. I wont divulge the story further as is my wont in my book reviews, for more check out the book.
Beauty of the book lies, in its simple yet poetic writing style. Vikram comes across as a writer at home with the sonnets of Bach to the symphonies of Mozart to the tunes of Schubert. His knowledge and wonderful usage of musical pieces and its blend with the theme of the story is a joyous experience. Vikram says ’’Writing about music is like dancing about architecture? well if so be the case, you have danced classier then the ballerina dear sir. The book shines where other attempts have failed, the deeper implications dialogues and confrontations between Michael, the lover and his beloved Julia is a treat. Consider this at their second meeting, Julia tells Michael she is married. When he asks why she doesn’t wear a wedding ring, she answers, ’’I don’t know. It distracts me. It distracts me when I play the piano. I look at it and I can’t concentrate on the music’’. Wow now do I need to say more on this, if Michael is longing for her, so is she, and what better way to express this then the subtle ways just narrated. Both are the sources of inspiration for each other, music to them is incomplete without the other, this is love at its best.
Genre of this book is the same as Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient or Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. It talks about the longing and the final acceptance of the dramatis personae to the reality that no matter how hard they try, they can never be together. To love is one thing and to achieve your love in life is another.. That then to me is the essence of the book. It says that no matter what happens in life, the blissful moments of love would be always warm and fresh in your heart, so savor them till they last.
Piece de resistance of the novel to me is the final scene. It ends with Julia’s solo performance of Bach’s ’’Art of Fugue.’’ In the audience, Michael thinks, ’’It is a beauty beyond imagining--clear, lovely, inexorable, phrase across phrase...it is an equal music’’. After the concert, he reflects, ’’Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music--not too much, or the soul could not sustain it--from time to time?. That then, my dear friend is the beauty of life, its rewards and its curse.
What is equal music? it is the sonnets of life after death, a life which is equal in forms, shapes and content. Life after death is a ethereal concept, and so is the theme touched upon in the concluding lines of the book. Music knows no boundaries, no constraints, its just equal to each of us. That?s what the protagonist reflects on at the end of the novel. Love speaks the language of music and music is expressed in the feelings of love, ethereal, sublime yet so true, so powerful and so enchanting.
P.S. I would love to hear from people who have read this, how do you reflect on the title of the book and the relation between Michael and his music, between Michael and Julia and between Michael Julia and her husband.