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The Noise of Time,
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Marianna
This book is written in the rhythms of Shostakovitch's music. If you let the waves of music sweep over you, you'll get the rhythm and appreciate the book. It is beautifully written, but requires some background knowledge of the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union (perhaps that's what's holding you back from loving this book).
Bena
This book is a chronicle of an era. If the character would not be as well-known, it would not catch much attention. Which is sad because the name is, in a way, incidental. The insight of the life and, more importantly, the mentality of the times is so true that I had to check the author's bio to see if he had lived in the Soviet Union. I had, so I know that this is how it was -- for any person. The fear, the paranoia, the adulation were the same, only the manifestations were different. Hard to believe that generations could live like that but that's is imperative to read this book. To learn about Shostakovich, yest, but mainly to attempt to understand the pervasiveness of fear through generations, maybe to never stop completely.
Christodoulos
To be honest, when I started reading this book I faced the exact same struggle as you mention. In the end it gets much much better and actually it turned out to be a great book with great meaning.
Robert
Same for me. I quite enjoyed "Arthur & George", but especialle fell in love with "The Sense of an Ending" (it became one of my all-time favourites), but "The Noise of Time" just didn't get me. Not at all. For me, it was just too much a narration of Shostakovich's life. The language, at times, was as elegant as expected when reading a novel by Barnes, but it was lacking all the rest.
Jane
"After five years of Lenin's New Economic Policy, he had written to a friend that 'Heaven on Earth will come in 200,000,000,000 years.' But that, he now thought, might have been over-optimistic" (55). I am struggling, too, but passages like this keep me reading.
Jesper E. Siig
I found the book an excellent depiction of what I imagine life must have been for a composer like Shostakovich during the (shifting) communist regimes. A composer who lives for his music - but must comply to Power to be able to live at all.
Peter Gallo
I had the exact opposite experience. I struggled through Sense of an Ending; it was a few years ago, but I don't even remember anything about it. I really enjoyed The Noise of Time. It made me want to read more novels on the lives of composers.
Michel Siskoid Albert
I finished it in a day, and that's really not my usual reading speed. It may have helped that I saw The Death of Stalin recently and had a sense of the era very fresh in mind.
I think it really helps when a book plays with memory like this to read as much of it as possible in one go, it starts vibrating with a kind of musicality for sure.
I think it really helps when a book plays with memory like this to read as much of it as possible in one go, it starts vibrating with a kind of musicality for sure.
Ergun Coruh
Same for me. Certainly it got better and better and I liked the book in the end, but I struggled immersing myself in it in the first half. Also it didn't feel like I was reading a novel, it was more of a biography. Not knowing which bits are fake and which are real made me a bit uncomfortable. The book is a fascinating account of an artist's survival in Stalin's Soviet Russia. I thoroughly recommend listening Shostakovich's 5th symphony in the background.
K. McDonnell
Perhaps your disappointment comes from the difficulty of the subject matter. Shostakovich survived under a brutal totalitarian regime, terror few, if any, of us can imagine, even in today's world.
Sometimes I feel disappointed and don't want to finish a book because I already know the outcome. The problem isn't in the story telling but in the tragedy of life. I think Barnes does an excellent job of bringing to life the horror, sadness and ultimate dissapointment of an artist who survived not for the sake of art but for his own life and those he loved and from that emerged "music which is inside ourselves -the music of our being- which is transformed by some into real music." p 135. We can never truly understand the pressures under which Shostakovich composed his music but Julian Barnes provides an excellent picture of an artist finding meaning despite the forces of despotism coercing him to praise the Soviet Union as a matter of survival.
Sometimes I feel disappointed and don't want to finish a book because I already know the outcome. The problem isn't in the story telling but in the tragedy of life. I think Barnes does an excellent job of bringing to life the horror, sadness and ultimate dissapointment of an artist who survived not for the sake of art but for his own life and those he loved and from that emerged "music which is inside ourselves -the music of our being- which is transformed by some into real music." p 135. We can never truly understand the pressures under which Shostakovich composed his music but Julian Barnes provides an excellent picture of an artist finding meaning despite the forces of despotism coercing him to praise the Soviet Union as a matter of survival.
Ann
I share your pain. I was so looking forward to reading this and I'm a quarter of the way in and don't know if I can finish.
PBurmeister
This is the first Barnes' I've read, so I can't compare it to others. I am going to share my copy with selected friends, who I think will appreciate its elegant and unflinching account of a life lived under extreme pressure of external and internal forces. These friends are creative people, trying to carve out spaces for being themselves.
P.
I'm feeling the same too. Really disappointing.
Jae Luck
Sadly, it doesn't.
Mark D
I agree. Well written and original but a little disappointing. The cover is full of extracts of positive reviews from newspapers etc., not always a good sign. But still, if you want to know something (more) about Shostakovich then it's worth a read.
Ranjan Kaul
I recently completed reading the book . . . yes, I agree, in comparison with Sense of an Ending, it is somewhat of a disappointment. It does get much better towards the end, and does raise similar moral and ethical questions, but it certainly is not in the same league as Sense of an Ending.
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