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English Music

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 141 ratings · 8 reviews

From the prize-winning author of First Light, Chatterton, and Hawksmoor - a dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving novel about the intricate ties between fathers and sons, between inheritance and culture, and between our understanding of the past and our grasp of the present. In post-World War I London, on the stage of the out-of-the-way Chemical Theatre, Clement Harco...more From the prize-winning author of First Light, Chatterton, and Hawksmoor - a dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving novel about the intricate ties between fathers and sons, between inheritance and culture, and between our understanding of the past and our grasp of the present. In post-World War I London, on the stage of the out-of-the-way Chemical Theatre, Clement Harcombe and his young, motherless son, Timothy, perform acts of spiritual healing, their visionary skills lifting the weight of despair and failure from the shoulders of their small band of followers. For Timothy, a boy with remarkable psychic gifts, it is a thrilling apprenticeship, a wonderful life with an adored father. But in the eyes of the larger world, it is a wayward existence with a suspect parent. And when Timothy is abruptly removed from his father's side, from the familiar twilit world of phantoms and ghosts, and thrust into the simple world of his grandparents' home in the country, he is not too young to feel 'bereft of his past'. Yet nothing can remove him from the realm of his visions. And as he passes from a difficult childhood into a troubled adulthood - his father slipping in and out of his life - it is this other, private world that provides him with his only certainty. In his visions - unanticipated and wholly enveloping - Timothy is drawn into the creations of Charles Dickens and William Blake, Thomas Malory and Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Gainsborough and J.M.W. Turner. Accompanied by Merlin or Miss Havisham, William Byrd or William Hogarth, Crusoe's Friday or Wonderland's Alice, Timothy is swept across time and history. And as his mysterious journeys begin to illuminate the ideas that have shaped them, Timothy comes to discern the power of the writer over his characters, the composer over what is heard, the painter over what is perceived - learns, finally, to hear the 'English music' his father described to him as a child. It is the workings of the(less)

Paperback, 416 pages

Published June 14th 1994 by Ballantine Books (first published 1992)

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Jun 02, 2012 Martha added it · review of another edition

Before the book starts, Ackroyd leaves us a little note, saying that 'literary readers' will notice he used material from a bunch of other English artists, while 'alert readers' will understand why he did so. Um, yeah, most understated preface EVER. Ackroyd, you are not subtle. Just as with Chatterton, you leave no space for the reader to pick up hints or put together pieces for herself. In a series of pedantic conversations, you dunked my head repeatedly into your Theme and held it there.

Happil...more Before the book starts, Ackroyd leaves us a little note, saying that 'literary readers' will notice he used material from a bunch of other English artists, while 'alert readers' will understand why he did so. Um, yeah, most understated preface EVER. Ackroyd, you are not subtle. Just as with Chatterton, you leave no space for the reader to pick up hints or put together pieces for herself. In a series of pedantic conversations, you dunked my head repeatedly into your Theme and held it there.

Happily, while the Theme of English Music is a variation of what you were getting at in Chatterton, the development here was more tender and mystical, less smug pomo. What Tim learns and learns and learns again is that religion doesn't have a monopoly on the life-after-death consolation. Art-lovers get in on that action too, because all great artworks live forever - he often compares it to an unbroken undulating line, like the tops of hills and buildings seen from a car window, or the trajectory of a head bouncing up and down as a person walks along. All artworks - music, poetry, prose, painting, performing, and maybe even dancing (although here he could have gone a lot farther!) - influence one another and so are eternally recurring.

Part Two of the Theme: all artworks are expressions not only of one artist, but of that artist's country or city, i.e. London. Despite its quasi-Jungian charm, that part of the Theme is boring to the point of tedium. It might have helped if Ackroyd had mentioned something about the National or Urban Ethos of other countries and cities. What is so very special about England and English? Yes you had a lot of geniuses, but you talk so much about essential Englishness and without comparison it's hard to understand what you're getting at.

And another thing, why the pastiche? Every other chapter is a dream/vision in which Tim finds himself inside the reworking of English classics. Nice way to show off, but it does your Theme no favors and it definitely destroyed your book's pacing. You insist that the national character is inescapable. So, you should not need to blatantly imitate other authors, their work will come out of your own original stuff anyway! That's why your form doesn't actually help you make your point. It just gives you the chance to put your arguments into the mouths of a bunch of other authors which gets sooooo boring. (Although that said, the mish-mash of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass together with Pilgrim's Progress was hands-down brilliant and so I forgive you a lot for that one.)

This is all very frustrating, because again, all this theorizing overshadowed really fun stuff. Of course I want to read about mind readers and healers setting eerie moods in gas-lit English theaters in the '30s. Ackroyd, you write fun characters, witty dialogue, and intriguing relationships/predicaments, you just need to get out of your own way with the morals!(less)

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Apr 05, 2012 Make rated it 3 of 5 stars

Of the Ackroyd novels I have read, this is both the most ambitious and the most severly flawed. Of the three stars I gave, two are for the immensely beautiful language that both soars poetic and chants in a trance-inducing way. The framing story is decent and has its heart in a good place. But the clou of the novel, Tim's many dream travels into English art and litterature, is a pretty unstable device and often disrupts the flow of the human story. I know Dickens and Defoe well enough to enjoy t...more

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May 24, 2012 Fiona Robson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another amazing book by Peter Ackroyd. I was really disappointed to finish this novel as I have become completely wrapped up in the story and characters. Especially loved the father/son relationship. This was such a heart warming read. Crying out to be made into a film!

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Feb 10, 2013 Alana rated it 2 of 5 stars

A weird one, a little hard to get into and very wordy. Hard to follow if you're not so clued up on classical English literature but there is a great story underneath this if you can perserve with it.

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Jun 17, 2010 Jessie rated it 2 of 5 stars

I simply did not have the rich literary history to adequately enjoy this book- but if it is so derivative, would I have enjoyed it anyway?

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May 08, 2008 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

a fairly odd book...my first impression of it was distinctly unfavorable...it was tedious and a bit too atmospheric and ethereal for me...
i'm not entirely willing to stand by this....i'll need to read it again...

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Oct 10, 2009 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: shelved

I like this book, but it has suffered the fate of so many books that ended up at the bottom of a pile... Shelved to be picked up again in the future.

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Mar 08, 2013 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

As good as Hawksmoor, better than First Light, not as good as The House of Doctor Dee, but true Ackroyd, restoring the mystery to human life.

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May 19, 2013 LS rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 18, 2013 Julia Phillips rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 16, 2013 NULLAND is currently reading it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

May 11, 2013 Alice Randall rated it 3 of 5 stars

May 08, 2013 Sirea Suárez marked it as to-read

May 08, 2013 Benoît added it · review of another edition

May 07, 2013 Lisa Houlihan added it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, male

May 04, 2013 Raquel marked it as to-read

Apr 28, 2013 Hoezodanbooks marked it as to-read

Shelves: novels, buy, 1990s

Apr 17, 2013 Kevin Tracy added it · review of another edition

Apr 17, 2013 Gillian Wheatley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Apr 10, 2013 Liz Hunt marked it as to-read

Apr 08, 2013 Josh marked it as to-read

Apr 05, 2013 Wyrdskein rated it 4 of 5 stars

Apr 05, 2013 Gaynor Chapman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mar 31, 2013 Lynda Edward marked it as to-read

Mar 30, 2013 Lisa Osborne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mar 20, 2013 Stephen marked it as to-read

Mar 17, 2013 Dennis added it · review of another edition

Mar 13, 2013 Drspk added it · review of another edition

Mar 03, 2013 Ian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feb 28, 2013 Laff rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.

Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age...more

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“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.” — 9 people liked it

“The best years are when you know what you're doing.” — 5 people liked it

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