Piano Tuner You know, it’s vary rare that a book reminds you of something you had forgotten about yourself. When I picked this book off the librarian’s shelf of “to-read” suggestions, the story brought back a truth that I’ve forgotten in the last few months: I love historical fiction. OK, let me qualify that statement. I love *well-done* historical fiction, but I love it with that eye-consuming, in-the-bath reading, can’t-put-it-down intensity with which all readers are familiar.

This tale of historical fiction paints the picture of a British piano tuner pulled into the service of the imperial army in Burma, sent from his foggy island home to the jungle to tune an instrument belonging to a unorthodox, unpopular but diplomatically successful Major. I love the way the author weaves together so many threads of plot and thought. Man’s experience of the foreign, the lure of the exotic, the power of music, modernity’s triumph over disease and disorder, peace, war, imperialism. (Insert a pleasant, dreamy sigh) Yet the author also doesn’t feel the need to stamp conclusions about these themes onto the reader’s forehead. It’s a gauzy story that drifted about me like the Iriwaddy River, alluring and intoxicating.

The piano tuner, dislocated from his life by the distance and difference of Burma as well as the appealing (almost sociopathically so) Surgeon-Major, drifts into unreality. He’s surrounded by a misty and intangible world he can’t help but love and he pulls the audience into sharing his sense of unreality. Care for a journey?

Frankly, it’s an amazing first novel for a 26-year-old with a biology degree who studied malaria along the Burma (now Myanmar) border, then wrote the book while attending medical school. Watch out Khaled Housseni, another doctor’s knocking on your door. No, it’s not perfect, and I don’t give it as high a rating as you might expect from all my gushing, but I enjoyed it as a good ride and I’ll look out for Mason in the future.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars – Book club selection