The Music Room by William Fiennes

Another short and sweet biography just right for holiday reading. The author belongs to the well-known old English family Fiennes and remembers his childhood in the family seat, a moated "castle". The book was recommended to me by a local author for its beautiful use of language. A good example of this is the picture conjured up by "a long sibilance like water on shingle as thousands of barley whiskers brushed the body and wings....", when the glider touches down in the field.

It is essentially the author's recollection of his epileptic older brother Richard, his towering rages and subsequent moments of remorse, his superhuman strength, and love of Leeds United. There is a mellowness about the whole thing, the gentle patience of his parents, the secret doors and passages of the castle, and above all its lyricism, the leit -motifs of birds and water, and the way the word-smith weaves his magic. Interspersed throughout are scientific sections and snippets dealing with the early research into the brain and its electrical impulses, the first EEGs. The rest has a dream-like quality.

Next on my list by the same author is The Snow Geese, which promises to have the same charm.

Janet - Sylvania Library

The Music Room by William Fiennes