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The Great Concert of the Night
“Why isn’t Jonathan Buckley better known? His novel of love, death and melancholy comedy, The Great Concert of the Night, is captivating.” —John Banville
David has just spent New Year’s Eve alone, watching Le Grand Concert de la Nuit , a film in which his former lover Imogen starred. In the early hours of the new year, consoled and tormented by her ethereal presence, he begins to write. What follows is a brilliantly various journal, chronicling a year in the life of a thinking man. David works as a curator at the ailing Sanderson-Perceval Museum in southern England, whose small collection of porcelain, musical instruments, crystals, velvet mushrooms, and glass jellyfish is as eccentric and idiosyncratic as the long-dead collectors’ tastes. David himself is a connoisseur of the derelict and nonutilitarian, of objects removed from the flow of time. Refusing the imposed order of a straightforward chronology, his journal moves fluidly back and forth in time, filled with fragments of life remembered, imagined, and recorded, from memories of his past life with Imogen or with his ex-wife, Samantha, to reflections on the lives and relics of female saints or the history of medicine. There are quotations from Seneca, Meister Eckhart, and the Goncourt brothers mixed in with the equally compelling imagined words of fictional film directors, actors, and, always, the fascinating Imogen, who is alive now only “in the perpetual present of the sentence.” In The Great Concert of the Night , Jonathan Buckley expertly interweaves sexual despair, cultural critique, the plot lines of one man’s quietly brilliant life, and the problems and paradoxes of writing, especially writing about and to the dead.
David has just spent New Year’s Eve alone, watching Le Grand Concert de la Nuit , a film in which his former lover Imogen starred. In the early hours of the new year, consoled and tormented by her ethereal presence, he begins to write. What follows is a brilliantly various journal, chronicling a year in the life of a thinking man. David works as a curator at the ailing Sanderson-Perceval Museum in southern England, whose small collection of porcelain, musical instruments, crystals, velvet mushrooms, and glass jellyfish is as eccentric and idiosyncratic as the long-dead collectors’ tastes. David himself is a connoisseur of the derelict and nonutilitarian, of objects removed from the flow of time. Refusing the imposed order of a straightforward chronology, his journal moves fluidly back and forth in time, filled with fragments of life remembered, imagined, and recorded, from memories of his past life with Imogen or with his ex-wife, Samantha, to reflections on the lives and relics of female saints or the history of medicine. There are quotations from Seneca, Meister Eckhart, and the Goncourt brothers mixed in with the equally compelling imagined words of fictional film directors, actors, and, always, the fascinating Imogen, who is alive now only “in the perpetual present of the sentence.” In The Great Concert of the Night , Jonathan Buckley expertly interweaves sexual despair, cultural critique, the plot lines of one man’s quietly brilliant life, and the problems and paradoxes of writing, especially writing about and to the dead.
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 8, 2018
24 people are currently reading
420 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Buckley
76 books54 followersJonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.
He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.
His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.
From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.
He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.
His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.
From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 23, 2025
This epistolary novel unfolds over a year; each of its twelve sections is a month. David, the curator of an unfashionable provincial museum, starts writing on the 1st of January, having seen the film, ‘Le Grand Concert de la Nuit’, of his former deceased lover, the actress Imogen.
It’s an equitable elegy, a benign though complex examination of the relationship with the actress and her other lovers. There’s a complicated mixture of melancholy and celebration, introspection and commemoration. The celluloid is a catalyst for his memories, and he understands that reconsideration will fashion a true picture of what they shared. Buckley carefully describes the convoluted interconnection in a subtle study of the relationship between two distinct characters. This distinction is clear early in the novel, where by chance, both David and Imogen, meet a fellow actor and her ex-lover while leaving a central London cinema. David says:
"While Imogen was talking, he glanced at me a few times, thinking, obviously: 'What does she see in this one?' A reasonable question: I have often asked it myself."
It becomes a Daedalian scrapbook of feelings, memories, sensations, and recollections that mix fluidly between interactions he recalls between his ex-wife, Imogen’s mother, a multitude of personalities from the world of filmmaking, the pair’s sexual milieux, and Imogen herself. Yet at times, David finds the verisimilitude of memory is misleading, and there are many instances when he questions Imogen’s understanding of events. Buckley writes:
"In the stream of memory and retelling, the reality of the past is transfigured." He adds that, like the restoration of an old building, "Bit by bit, the old fabric is replenished. Stonework is renewed, damaged glass repaired, carvings are recut, rotten timber replaced. In time, little of the original remains; it becomes impossible to tell what is new and what is old." He finishes, saying, "With each retelling, the past becomes more solid and less true."
The book is venereally charged. While David exercises fidelity, is reclusive and reflective, Imogen is open, and both elusive and enigmatic. Invited by Imogen, an active participant, David can only recall having been an observer at the Maison du Maitre orgies. Buckley writes of the salacious events:
"Her pleasure seemed to depend largely upon the mirrors: she watched as if enthralled by her own wildness. Her hair was loose — thick curls, the color of brass, that reached halfway to her waist; a Pre-Raphaelite maenad."
And as a muse of the director Antoine Vermeiren, the prurient arthouse films are alleged to offer the director an opportunity to exploit Imogen. Viewing her films again, David is uncomfortable with the knowledge that some of the sex scenes may not have been simulated. He also recollects that Vermeiren had proposed a film of Orpheus, and had presented it to Imogen:
"Orpheus would be an uxorious middle-aged man, a ballad singer, mourning for the wife he had lost, through his own stupidity. After years of moping, he would put himself out in the world again. He would become a party animal, or pretend that he had become one. A gang of highly sexed young women would tear him apart, perhaps not metaphorically."
Most references are scholarly, and here, for example in the use of maenads and uxoriousness, Buckley’s references Greek mythology and his reputable lexicon. Added to this, the writing is enriched with considerations of sainthood, Ancient Rome, medicine, cinematic evaluation, and art appreciation. On the subject of beauty, David’s told:
"The beautiful is purely pleasurable, according to Schopenhauer, whereas the sublime gives rise to a mingling of pleasure and pain. The sublime is resistant to contemplation."
Where others might have sifted through Instagram uploads, David’s search for his dead lover is more erudite and nuanced. David’s necessity is to recreate his former lover, not in words on a page, but in a series of celebratory moments that can be conjured-up in a cerebral reverie.
"When I think of Imogen, what presents itself to my mind is not a story. I think of her not of a life. A story, a life, is something one makes; it is not what one remembers. She, the living Imogen, is what I remember. Each memory is a reliquary; each memory contains something of the substance of her. Not an account, but a constellation of moments, or of their remains."
A poignant, evocative, complex, and fascinating read full of absorbing reflections, tranquil moments, and self-confident prose.
It’s an equitable elegy, a benign though complex examination of the relationship with the actress and her other lovers. There’s a complicated mixture of melancholy and celebration, introspection and commemoration. The celluloid is a catalyst for his memories, and he understands that reconsideration will fashion a true picture of what they shared. Buckley carefully describes the convoluted interconnection in a subtle study of the relationship between two distinct characters. This distinction is clear early in the novel, where by chance, both David and Imogen, meet a fellow actor and her ex-lover while leaving a central London cinema. David says:
"While Imogen was talking, he glanced at me a few times, thinking, obviously: 'What does she see in this one?' A reasonable question: I have often asked it myself."
It becomes a Daedalian scrapbook of feelings, memories, sensations, and recollections that mix fluidly between interactions he recalls between his ex-wife, Imogen’s mother, a multitude of personalities from the world of filmmaking, the pair’s sexual milieux, and Imogen herself. Yet at times, David finds the verisimilitude of memory is misleading, and there are many instances when he questions Imogen’s understanding of events. Buckley writes:
"In the stream of memory and retelling, the reality of the past is transfigured." He adds that, like the restoration of an old building, "Bit by bit, the old fabric is replenished. Stonework is renewed, damaged glass repaired, carvings are recut, rotten timber replaced. In time, little of the original remains; it becomes impossible to tell what is new and what is old." He finishes, saying, "With each retelling, the past becomes more solid and less true."
The book is venereally charged. While David exercises fidelity, is reclusive and reflective, Imogen is open, and both elusive and enigmatic. Invited by Imogen, an active participant, David can only recall having been an observer at the Maison du Maitre orgies. Buckley writes of the salacious events:
"Her pleasure seemed to depend largely upon the mirrors: she watched as if enthralled by her own wildness. Her hair was loose — thick curls, the color of brass, that reached halfway to her waist; a Pre-Raphaelite maenad."
And as a muse of the director Antoine Vermeiren, the prurient arthouse films are alleged to offer the director an opportunity to exploit Imogen. Viewing her films again, David is uncomfortable with the knowledge that some of the sex scenes may not have been simulated. He also recollects that Vermeiren had proposed a film of Orpheus, and had presented it to Imogen:
"Orpheus would be an uxorious middle-aged man, a ballad singer, mourning for the wife he had lost, through his own stupidity. After years of moping, he would put himself out in the world again. He would become a party animal, or pretend that he had become one. A gang of highly sexed young women would tear him apart, perhaps not metaphorically."
Most references are scholarly, and here, for example in the use of maenads and uxoriousness, Buckley’s references Greek mythology and his reputable lexicon. Added to this, the writing is enriched with considerations of sainthood, Ancient Rome, medicine, cinematic evaluation, and art appreciation. On the subject of beauty, David’s told:
"The beautiful is purely pleasurable, according to Schopenhauer, whereas the sublime gives rise to a mingling of pleasure and pain. The sublime is resistant to contemplation."
Where others might have sifted through Instagram uploads, David’s search for his dead lover is more erudite and nuanced. David’s necessity is to recreate his former lover, not in words on a page, but in a series of celebratory moments that can be conjured-up in a cerebral reverie.
"When I think of Imogen, what presents itself to my mind is not a story. I think of her not of a life. A story, a life, is something one makes; it is not what one remembers. She, the living Imogen, is what I remember. Each memory is a reliquary; each memory contains something of the substance of her. Not an account, but a constellation of moments, or of their remains."
A poignant, evocative, complex, and fascinating read full of absorbing reflections, tranquil moments, and self-confident prose.
February 9, 2020
This novel keeps the reader off balance in a variety of ways, and the great majority of them work. The narrator’s voice holds together short (but not all short) pieces that begin all over the place in terms of time and character (no introductions; it takes a long time to know who some characters are), mixing the present (in chronologically monthly chapters in a mostly non-chronological novel) with various pasts. Some “stories” are spread out across the book, while a small number of stories are mostly told with limited interruption.
The novel is structured as a journal, but it doesn’t really feel like a journal. There are moments of post-modernism, but overall it’s not a post-modernist novel. With a lot that deals with memory and different sorts of nostalgia, the novel is at least as much about art (which has its own present (the novel is full of descriptions of art), but when your once love is an actress films have a past as well), history (beyond one’s personal memory) and, most of all, death. And yet Concert is not primarily sad or elegiac, there’s a lot that’s celebratory or beside the point.
In short, this is a novel that’s hard to put your finger on. It’s more an experience, a fresh reading experience of this and that scattered throughout, an amazing amount in a novel that is not long, a novel that is calmly showy, showy in how much the author can do without making a show of himself (except for moments). This is a novel to read in a short period of time. NYRB Books has done a service bringing this 2018 British novel across the Atlantic. A 4.5.
The novel is structured as a journal, but it doesn’t really feel like a journal. There are moments of post-modernism, but overall it’s not a post-modernist novel. With a lot that deals with memory and different sorts of nostalgia, the novel is at least as much about art (which has its own present (the novel is full of descriptions of art), but when your once love is an actress films have a past as well), history (beyond one’s personal memory) and, most of all, death. And yet Concert is not primarily sad or elegiac, there’s a lot that’s celebratory or beside the point.
In short, this is a novel that’s hard to put your finger on. It’s more an experience, a fresh reading experience of this and that scattered throughout, an amazing amount in a novel that is not long, a novel that is calmly showy, showy in how much the author can do without making a show of himself (except for moments). This is a novel to read in a short period of time. NYRB Books has done a service bringing this 2018 British novel across the Atlantic. A 4.5.
October 9, 2024
“As I’m falling asleep, an idea presents itself of people preserved on a page, lustreless, like pallid specimens in formaldehyde. The idea expires a moment later. Words do not preserve the person; they are not held in a colourless medium of language. Another image arises; an object calcifying in a stream of mineral rich water; a bottle becoming encased in stone. In the stream of memory and retelling, the reality of the past is transfigured. The image of the bottle does not satisfy. Better, perhaps, to think of the restoration of a building. Bit by bit, the old fabric is replenished. Stonework is renewed, damaged glass repaired, carvings are recut, rotten timber replaced. In time, little of the original remains; it become impossible to tell what is new and what is old. This each recollection of a moment, of a conversation, reinforces some part of what is being remembered, and in the process of reinforcement, something is replaced. With each retelling the past becomes more solid and less true.
This book is published by the independent UK publisher Sort of Books, which was established by the founders of the Rough Guide travel series, initially to publish “Driving Over Lemons” an-ex-pat-living-in-rural-Europe genre book by a friend of theirs (also the original drummer for Genesis) but which later branched into fiction.
Jonathan Buckley is clearly a versatile writer – an writer and editorial director at Rough Guides, a BBC National Short Story award winner (following immediately after Lionel Shriver) and a writer of relatively unknown novels which seem commonly to lead to those who review them to comment that they are surprised that the author is not better known.
And based on this one book I would add accomplished to versatile and add my own voice to the chorus of surprise at his relatively low profile as a novelist – this is a quietly thoughtful and beautifully crafted novel.
The novel is written over a year – with each month forming a chapter. Our narrator, curator of a private museum founded by two Victorian collectors (with their own interesting back story) marks the New Year by watching “Le Grand Concert de la Nuit” which features his former lover Imogen – now dead of cancer. Imogen was from a rich family – who own an English country house – but became an actress in French art cinema.
Over each month, the chapters roam across: the narrator and Imogen’s relationship; Imogen’s illness and eventual assisted suicide; Imogen’s family; the narrator’s ex-wife, a schoolteacher, who leaves him for the mother of one of her pupils (an acquaintance of the narrator); the eventual failure of the museum in the face of dwindling visitor numbers; medical history including John Hunter; the musuem’s collection (including of deformities and foetuses) – note the last two parts reminded me of Jessie Greengrass’s sights; Catholic saints and Roman festivals; a relationship Imogen forms with a local eccentric/down and, in a rather touching story how later the narrator feels obliged to continue the relationship and forms a touching friendship which eventually leads to the friend marrying after a quickly aborted trawler-based career; (by contrast) a rather bizarre and I felt out of place visit Imogen and the narrator make to a high class orgiastic party;
But the real subject of the book is remembering and restoration – time and time again the narrator comes back to the media in which memories can be captured and in particular the memory of those, who like Imogen have departed: personal memories, shared conversations with third parties, writing films, museums – and Imogen and the narrators chosen professions all play their part
“I was destined to my profession, Emma has often said. My brain is like a museum; images occupy my memory as exhibits occupy their display cases, she thinks.”
“The museum: an assemblage of objects removed from the flow of time: protected from the depredations of utility”
It was like acting in a way she said, we become someone else when we read, and each book changes us, for a while, even if only for as long as we are reading it.
Not everything in the book worked for me – in particular French arthouse cinema features heavily with lengthy verbal descriptions of scenes from films in which Imogen appears – I would I suspect have little interest in watching such films, sympathising with the statement: “For Imogen’s mother, the films of Antoine Vermeiren exemplify traits of French culture with which she had no patience whatever, notably an over-indulgence of artists who seem to believe that that they are under some obligation to shock” but even less in lengthy text descriptions of fictional scenes.
But overall this was I felt a well executed novel – recommended.
To describe Imogen I could write: five feet, eight inches, tall, of slender build …. The eyes ….The hands; delicate and long fingered …. Still she cannot be seen. This character named Imogen speaks words that Imogen spoke, but Imogen’s voice cannot be heard …. An ideal Imogen, in the perpetual present of the sentence, where nobody is alive and nobody dead
October 18, 2018
Having finished this last night I have just gone back and downgraded my ratings for a couple of recent reads: this is a five star book.
Every time I finish one of Buckley's beautiful, elegiac novels I ask the same questions - why isn't he better known, and why aren't his books on prize lists?
'The Great Concert of the Night' is narrated by David, the curator of an obscure museum of medical history that is threatened with closure due to low visitor numbers and council funding cuts, and takes the form of a diary written over the course of a year in the aftermath of the death of his former lover, Imogen, an actress in French art house films. Much as Buckley's 'Nostalgia' (2013) was arranged as a cabinet of curiosities, this novel is arranged in short entries rather like exhibits in a museum, alternating between memories of Imogen, scenes from her films, the narrator's present day meetings with various characters, and musings on a range of historical references to death, mortality and memory. The whole thing has a very melancholy tone as the narrator wrestles with issues of love, memory and how (or if) a person can be contained by words on a page.
Over the course of his last few books Buckley has been quietly forging a unique and highly idiosyncratic body of work, but one that is far more interesting and more vital than that of many of his more celebrated peers. Particularly recommended if you enjoy authors like Ali Smith or Will Eaves.
Every time I finish one of Buckley's beautiful, elegiac novels I ask the same questions - why isn't he better known, and why aren't his books on prize lists?
'The Great Concert of the Night' is narrated by David, the curator of an obscure museum of medical history that is threatened with closure due to low visitor numbers and council funding cuts, and takes the form of a diary written over the course of a year in the aftermath of the death of his former lover, Imogen, an actress in French art house films. Much as Buckley's 'Nostalgia' (2013) was arranged as a cabinet of curiosities, this novel is arranged in short entries rather like exhibits in a museum, alternating between memories of Imogen, scenes from her films, the narrator's present day meetings with various characters, and musings on a range of historical references to death, mortality and memory. The whole thing has a very melancholy tone as the narrator wrestles with issues of love, memory and how (or if) a person can be contained by words on a page.
Over the course of his last few books Buckley has been quietly forging a unique and highly idiosyncratic body of work, but one that is far more interesting and more vital than that of many of his more celebrated peers. Particularly recommended if you enjoy authors like Ali Smith or Will Eaves.
December 25, 2023
Like the objects in the fictional Sanderson-Perceval Museum, The Great Concert of the Night is destined to end up a mere curiosity—with its small corps of happenstance admirers—though it stands as an immaculate example of what fragmented narrative can accomplish. The prose is sharp and restrained; the historical facts are obscure and relevant; the dialogue is short and wise; the characters are fleeting and unknowable. Too bad we've lost Imogen nearly as soon as we meet her, as the story's present is David's year of mourning. Descriptions of scenes from her films flood the work, shaping for the narrator a memory palace, accessible to us in glimpses of a different kind of art. I repeat: there's enough art in here for a lifetime.
The director of (the real) Sir John Soane's Museum reviewed this novel in the New York Times; I encourage you to pay a visit if ever find yourself in London.
Imogen wished that she had been able to make films of the kind that Robert Bresson had made: films that had the sadness one finds in a town, in a landscape or a house, rather than the beauty or sadness one finds in a photo of a town, a landscape or a house, as Bresson himself had put it.
The director of (the real) Sir John Soane's Museum reviewed this novel in the New York Times; I encourage you to pay a visit if ever find yourself in London.
Imogen wished that she had been able to make films of the kind that Robert Bresson had made: films that had the sadness one finds in a town, in a landscape or a house, rather than the beauty or sadness one finds in a photo of a town, a landscape or a house, as Bresson himself had put it.
July 17, 2021
What a nice surprise this was! The primary reason I bought this was because NYRB published this. Gorgeous, measured prose. The sentences are full of feeling yet never overwrought.
February 16, 2020
Original and extraordinary and moving. I urge you to read it.
February 13, 2024
Beautifully written and romantic and made for another world of patience and elegance
July 20, 2025
No doubt beautifully written but it was SO difficult for me to finish this book. The book is kind of impressionist in the way it just describes scenes without adding any emotional context; it's up to the reader to decide how the narrator feels in that moment. I just wish it was more interesting.
January 20, 2020
I had never heard of this author until recently, when I saw him described as a “writer’s writer.” That usually means there is something in the work that is not reader-friendly. Certainly there is some obscurity in this novel, including supporting characters where I’m not sure I totally understood who they were. But (to the extent I followed it) I enjoyed the love story.
February 10, 2021
Moving. Delicate. Allusive. Buckley's language and ease the vehicle; and too the force.
July 12, 2025
Towards the end of this novel, during which the narrator David has visited orgies, film shoots, and the great sights of Italy, he meets a friend and his new girlfriend for dinner. It is, like so many other scenes, entirely mundane, and yet we approach it with the same reverence as we do scenes of solemn loss and wild ecstasy. "What does it mean that this was worth writing?" we ask ourselves.
There are a handful of proper stories in this novel. Were it not for the eccentric lead pairing, the would be drily unremarkable. But this is not a book of stories: it is a book about them, how we tell them, and, most of all, how we remember them. This is narrative by way of museum curation: scenes and historical anecdotes arranged thematically, sometimes chronologically, to evoke meaning through juxtaposition.
Buckley's masterstroke is crafting a narrator who is just smart enough, just naive enough, and just enough of a dweeb that the fragmentary structure is believably a reflection of his own instinct to view life as a retrospective exhibit. The papal history tangents are not Buckley's but David's, the efforts of a well-read eccentric to find meaning in complex relationships. The ways his, Imogen's, and William's lives intersect each other, and parallel those of the museum's founders, does not read as the author's delicate plotting but the character's idiosyncratic narratavizing.
Easy 5/5, the type of book you send fragments of your to your friends
There are a handful of proper stories in this novel. Were it not for the eccentric lead pairing, the would be drily unremarkable. But this is not a book of stories: it is a book about them, how we tell them, and, most of all, how we remember them. This is narrative by way of museum curation: scenes and historical anecdotes arranged thematically, sometimes chronologically, to evoke meaning through juxtaposition.
Buckley's masterstroke is crafting a narrator who is just smart enough, just naive enough, and just enough of a dweeb that the fragmentary structure is believably a reflection of his own instinct to view life as a retrospective exhibit. The papal history tangents are not Buckley's but David's, the efforts of a well-read eccentric to find meaning in complex relationships. The ways his, Imogen's, and William's lives intersect each other, and parallel those of the museum's founders, does not read as the author's delicate plotting but the character's idiosyncratic narratavizing.
Easy 5/5, the type of book you send fragments of your to your friends
October 8, 2021
I would guess this is what many detractors of literary fiction would deem literary fiction. Not that I mind literary fiction, but I can understand why many readers see these types of books as mindless intellectual snobbery. Buckley is a wonderful writer, and this book is peppered with all the usual literary fiction hallmarks: internal dialogues about art/music/sex/women (almost always women, or gay men), facts from obscure sciences or obscure people, a manufactured person given the biography that tends toward believing they are real, foreign words/artworks/books left untranslated. It is as if most literary fiction is less concerned about plot and more so about proving to the reader how smart and hip and sui generis the author is, who else, it screams, could know all these things?? Still, I love learning things, and also love discovering that the person or work mentioned is entirely made up, not real at all, except here, in this book I am reading. So the book succeeded there, grandly. Otherwise, it felt bland and shallow, a lot of talking/telling about feelings but not much showing. Talking about feelings is like talking about sex: wasted breath, wasted energy. In sum, the book seems less about Imogen and more about Daniel's impressions of her which ultimately disappointed me. I wanted Imogen, less filtered, I guess.
December 27, 2023
having picked this book up because of its look, i did not know what i was getting in to. the mystery in the description was enough to compel me to buy it; but after reading, i now know why i was drawn to it. there is such a delicate violence within the book, where the cycle of life is just as average and expected as the seasons. it comes and goes and isn’t meant to be dwelled upon, a notion so paralyzing in the age of artificial preservation. there are no advertisements or awards for books like these, as they are meant to find those who subconsciously seek them out. the progression fit the ideas, constantly facing the past while existing in the present-future. i have read many things and don’t think i would’ve encountered this book anywhere but on a random table in the middle of a jam packed Strand bookstore, where i found it.
definitely a keepsake book, much like how i feel about the secret history. i’m glad i got to experience imogen.
March 11, 2020
A breathtaking achievement.
Or Covid-19 response? Imagine a real woman, who is an actress in films. You, as reader, 'see' her in the film images as described. You 'see' her in life, through her recollections, through the narrator's recollections. She is past, and present, without a future. Imagine a museum collection of a physician family. A permanent collection, museum, which might not be permanent. Imagine a homeless man to whom the woman responds by acknowledging him, some cash, some conversation. A man on the outs who might pull himself back in. As the filming ends. As the woman's life ends. All in interwoven scenes, from films, from life. Time, as it can when watching films, replayed, reversed, moved ahead.
Or Covid-19 response? Imagine a real woman, who is an actress in films. You, as reader, 'see' her in the film images as described. You 'see' her in life, through her recollections, through the narrator's recollections. She is past, and present, without a future. Imagine a museum collection of a physician family. A permanent collection, museum, which might not be permanent. Imagine a homeless man to whom the woman responds by acknowledging him, some cash, some conversation. A man on the outs who might pull himself back in. As the filming ends. As the woman's life ends. All in interwoven scenes, from films, from life. Time, as it can when watching films, replayed, reversed, moved ahead.
April 10, 2022
Very close to a 5 star. Well written and well plotted. Small "chapters" of just a paragraph or 2 invite the reader to finish just one more and then another and another. The story can be confusing with individuals showing up that are not introduced until later so that their relationship to the main character is undefined initially. The narrative also jumps around between the present and more than one period in the past. The reader needs to concentrate hard to follow the story - but it is worth the effort. This is a book that I will read again. (Purchased from the secondhand shelves outside the Strand Bookstore in NYC.)
July 24, 2025
I can understand why some people wouldn’t like this book to be honest but as someone who writes journal entries as sporadically and sometimes even as scatterbrained as the protagonist, I really did connect with it.
Especially when going through grief, it can feel as though we are trying to make those connections (even something as simple as “oh yeah this happened today but 5 years ago”) as a way to keep the memory alive and while this book is by no means perfect, it struck a chord with me that I still feel resonate days after.
Especially when going through grief, it can feel as though we are trying to make those connections (even something as simple as “oh yeah this happened today but 5 years ago”) as a way to keep the memory alive and while this book is by no means perfect, it struck a chord with me that I still feel resonate days after.
March 17, 2021
Despite the somewhat tedious moments of epatering ler bawjwazee, this is a very good book indeed. It's far, far more interesting structurally and stylistically than most English language fiction, and smart enough to keep things going. Generally I dock two or three stars for any sub-Laurentian 'I like being exploited because it breaks down my super-ego, man' stuff, but here it's just about balanced by the total nerddom of the museum.
April 30, 2020
The fairly brief paragraphs, often disjointed, force the reader to put together the story of a romance between a museum curator and a French actress, one which alternates between their lives and the parts she plays.
The museum's collection is interestingly macabre. I'd like to hear more about the glass jellyfish.
The museum's collection is interestingly macabre. I'd like to hear more about the glass jellyfish.
February 4, 2020
Buckley details several stories in non-episodic bites, but at heart this book seems to explore the limits of the written word (and also filmed records) at representing reality--particularly representing a person who has died. Not so much sad as elegiac, a meditation on things that pass.
March 15, 2020
A slow read, meant to be savored rather than run through in a sitting. The ruminations on the meaning of life, the thoughts expressed utilizing artwork, quotes of famous philosophers and others, cause the reader to reflect on what it means to live in this moment, and what is the function of memory.
April 1, 2020
Brilliant
A journal of David, the protagonist, started in a New Years Eve after watching "Le Grand Concert de la Nuit" a film starred by his former lover, Imogen now dead. A sort of journal of remembrances, reflections and daily life events, brilliantly written.
A journal of David, the protagonist, started in a New Years Eve after watching "Le Grand Concert de la Nuit" a film starred by his former lover, Imogen now dead. A sort of journal of remembrances, reflections and daily life events, brilliantly written.
September 7, 2024
Highbrow fiction. A reflection on a past love affair by a long suffering artistic minded man. A journal of self aggrandizement using beautiful words and phrases. A joy to read nonetheless but you have to be in the mood for life reflection.
April 23, 2020
"Who we are has so little to do with us."
January 6, 2021
Beautifully written. Gems on every page.
November 25, 2022
A gorgeous meditation on time, love and death.
October 31, 2022
Banger 10/10
November 26, 2024
This book is absolutely stunning. I picked it up from my library because I liked the cover (haha) and was so excited that I liked the content of it even more. The Great Concert of the Night tells the story of David in episodic vignettes, and they hit you like a sucker punch in the very best way. Dark and twisty, this novel takes the reader through grief and asks readers- what does it take to preserve the memory of someone? Because it is not something that is clear. I love books that readers can pull many meanings from, and this one is no different. Definitely one of my favorite books from 2024.
April 26, 2025
My ideal score would be like 3.7, but because those stars are quantized as wholes, I will lean towards 4, which rather screws my perception. Anyways, it’s a beautifully told story that never had much to tell in the first place. It is a story about Imogen and the narrators perception of her. Very sweet and poetic, the ending was especially beautiful. Quite philosophical and paints Imogen extremely well. I feel like I relate to her in some ways. Sad they didn’t have any chemistry, tho.
May 8, 2025
3.5/5
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