The Piano Tuner
Daniel Mason
311 pages


in 1886 Edgar Drake, a London piano tuner, was sent to Burma by the British Army, to visit a surgeon-major stationed in a remote jungle village.  The surgeon-major had demanded a fine rare piano be sent to him, and then later demanded it be tuned or he would resign.  This quirky military leader is the stuff of myth and legend among the British forces.  And so Edgar embarked on a kind of Apocalypse Now sort of journey from London to the Burmese village.  The  journey takes up nearly half of this book and is full of cliches:  Edgar is the typical hapless innocent in a foreign land; he looks wide-eyed at the scenery in every Burmese town; he shudders at atrocities; he gets annoyed with British colonial beaurocracy.   

I found the story even less believable once Edgar finally met Doctor Anthony Carroll.  Inexplicably, the doctor takes Edgar into his confidence, sharing military secrets.  Mason implies their strong bonds come from a shared love of music, and the piano itself, but this is not very believable.  After Carroll diagnoses a patient with Saint Vitus' dance:  "St Vitus, thought Edgar, Vitus was the name of Bach's grandfather, It is strange how all is connected, even if only by a name." (p. 189) ... huh?  Mason's prose is overly descriptive, with adjectives galore, extraneous detail, and trite phrasing.  After Doctor Carroll delivers a particularly stern lecture to Edgar, "Edgar's pony twitched her ears at the mosquitos that buzzed around her head, the only sound.  Her mane shivered."  (p. 264)  Puh-leeze!

This book was Mason's first novel, and it shows.  There was just enough foreshadowing to hold my interest to the end, but this is not a book I cannot recommend this book with much enthusiasm.  ( )