The Piano Tuner
July 6th 2008 23:43
A bit too theatrical? Maybe … but after finishing The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, I was left with the massive sense of achievement that this first time novelist must have felt for his work.
Edgar Drake, a passionate but humble piano tuner in 1880’s London is summoned to the War Office and ‘offered’ a consignment to Burma; one of England’s most successful officers in the war-torn Shan States needs his Erard grand piano tuned. Drake feels he is given little choice in the matter, but in reality his heart and mind are already leading him into an exciting adventure that surely will never come his way again. So, with his wife’s blessing he begins a journey into the far reaches of England’s outposts,
Unlike many of his military guardians along the way, sensitive Edgar is seduced by Burma and its ancient, artistic culture, that as a Londoner (and British invader) he has been kept completely ignorant of. And although the Erard is his first and foremost concern, Edgar quickly becomes entrenched in the life of the piano’s owner, Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll and the Shan village of Mae Lwin.
I enjoyed this story immensely. For a first novel Mason has penetrated a level of fiction that is both totally entertaining and extremely knowledgeable. Not surprising after reading the Author’s Note. As a biologist he spent a year on the Thai-Myanmar border studying malaria (where much of the book was written) … “I journeyed north to the small town of Mae Sam Laep, where the swollen waters of the Salween River etch the border, far downstream from the imaginary site of Mae Lwin. There I traveled on a long-tailed trading boat through the wooded, silent shores, where we stopped at Karen villages hidden in the forest. It was hot that afternoon and the air was still and silent, but at a muddy trading post on the banks of a small river a strange sound rose up from the thick brush. It was melody, and before the motor kicked in and we moved away from the shore, I recognized it as the sound of a piano.
Perhaps it was only a recording, creaking out on one of the dusty old phonographs that can still be found in some of the remote markets. Perhaps. It was however, terribly out of tune.”
That such a transient experience can produce a wonderful piece of fiction never ceases to amaze me. How many seemingly irrelevant life experiences brought us some of the best fiction ever written? Imagine if everyone could tell their story with eloquent prose and descriptive passage. The mind boggles at what we could learn and experience, because even though The Piano Tuner is set in a time and place a long way from my knowledge base, I was able to travel to Burma through a mere 355 pages, riding on the creativity of someone who had.
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