A STUNNING NOVEL OF CLASSICAL MUSIC, FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND NATIONHOOD FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE, BOURNVILLE AND MIDDLE ENGLAND
The year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired young composers in France. In Belle Epoque Paris he cuts a charismatic, dandyish figure, whose technically flawless music hides a deep emotional core, and whose unpredictable talent is as hard to pin down as his mysterious personal life.
When Ravel’s devoted acolyte Mylo encourages him to take on a new pupil – a rising British composer called Ralph Vaughan Williams – an unlikely cross-channel friendship starts to blossom. An aristocratic Englishman and collector of folk songs, Vaughan Williams appears to have nothing in common with his teacher except that, somehow, each of them seems to represent an archetype of his own country.
But as the shadow of war approaches, their friendship becomes entwined with Mylo’s own tragic story. The two friends must pursue their vocation through one of the most turbulent but creative periods in history. Will their differing senses of national identity – one ‘typically French’, the other ‘so British’ – liberate or constrain them?
LESSONS IN HARMONY is a stunning novel about the power of music to create beauty, to freeze time, and, at its greatest, to express the personality not just of its composer, but of an entire nation.
About the Author
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters’ Club, Middle England and, most recently, The Proof of My Innocence. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Européen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Jonathan Coe lives in London.
Industry Reviews
A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat
THE TIMES
A novelist who gains in range and reputation with every book
PAT BARKER
Absolutely wonderful - I just loved it. A book that slowly, quietly reveals its themes and points of view. Beautifully, elegantly, movingly done
CHRIS ADDISON
Coe’s light, funny writing makes you feel better
Evening Standard
I was completely convinced and engrossed by the fictional reconstruction of the friendship between those two very different composers. The writing has all the subtlety and wit that is customary for Jonathan Coe, but rare, and there is so much wisdom in it - about the sacrifices demanded of the friends and partners in the orbit of a musical genius, about rivalry, disappointment, and the convulsions of world politics
CLARE CHAMBERS
Lessons in Harmony is a witty, poignant, layered blend of memoir, anecdote and recollection, so convincingly rendered that one neither knows (nor cares) where fact ends and fiction begins. I was left ruminating not only the impact creatives have on each other, but also how Coe succeeds in balancing, with so light a touch, harmony, discord, and sacrifice in the musical, the personal, AND the political. A highly satisfying, wise and humane read
JOANNA MILLER
Lessons In Harmony, the story of the bond between two giants of twentieth century music, is as witty, lapidary and elegant as a Ravel miniature and as rich and deep as Vaughan Williams at his most lyrical. With his love of music, European culture and the foibles of Britishness, Jonathan Coe is uniquely equipped to craft this story of male friendship, art, love and nationhood
STUART MACONIE
My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe
BOB MORTIMER
Please God... if there is a next life, let me write as well as Jonathan Coe
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Probably the best English novelist of his generation'
NICK HORNBY
