ABOUT THE BOOK

In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Claire understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death.

Designated the King's 'Angel' because of his good looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the King's adulterous and estranged wife Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided between duty and passion, how can Peter Claire find the path that will realise his hopes and save his soul?

Rose Tremain's work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and she has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Sunday Express Book of the Year, the Dylan Thomas Short Story Award, a Giles Cooper Award for a radio play and the Angel Literary Award. As well as novels and short stories, she writes for film, radio and TV. Her books have been translated into 14 languages. Rose Tremain lives in Norfolk with the biographer Richard Holmes. She has a daughter, Eleanor, who is an actress.

 

Here are some readers' thoughts on Rose Tremain's Music and Silence:

"This is quite a long book - some 450 pages. It is set in the Danish Court 1629-1630. Being a royal tale, it is full of intrigue, imperious behaviour, illicit love affairs, deceit etc. Still it is not a historical novel in the accepted sense. Some of the story purports to be drawn from the "notebook" of one lady, the "private papers" of another, neither of which convey a sense of period. There is also on the fringes of the story an Irish earl with the unlikely name of O'Fingal, with his estate in Cloyne, near Cork, in the west of Ireland (!), all of which casts doubt on the historical research.

On the other hand the quality of the writing is extremely good and there are wonderful descriptive passages. The overall approach is to present the story in the style of fairy tale: in consequence, characters and situations are superficial, black and white - there is even a wicked stepmother and a beautiful virtuous stepdaughter. For its fairly threadbare historical content it is far too long and many of the threads woven into the tapestry of the tale seem to be mere padding - to meet a target of 450 pages? A pity, since the writing is so good."

A member of Raheny Reading Group.