The Noise of Time is Julian Barnes's long awaited follow up to his Booker Prize winning novel (and favourite of this blog) The Sense of an Ending. No pressure Mr Barnes! With a work trip to Boston last week I had been saving this book for the journey, after all with a cover this handsome the novel was to be the perfect in flight companion.
The novel is a fictional biography of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and walks a fine line between historical account and lyrical novella. Shostakovich's story is remarkable given the speed at which he could be hauled in from of the KGB to receive a review front Stalin himself but readers should note that this territory is about a far removed from The Sense of an Ending as you could get. Yes there's the succinct chapters and moments of deeply personal empathy but on the whole this is a novel about ideology and Establishment.
"Now they were not just reviewing his music but editorialising about his existence"
On the whole Barnes's beautiful prose carries the novel through the detailed and well researched biographical sections which explore the pressure Shostakovich endured to produce work that met the approval of Stalin's ideology. But at times too much attention, in such a short novel, is given over to this pressure and less to the spirit of the man himself. That said, there are moments when the balance is blend is perfect.
By the way, my bookish highlight of Boston? An afternoon browse through Harvard Bookstore...
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