Oh how worthy an enterprise and how promising a beginning! Yet, how many worthy enterprises have begun well only to run out of ideas and, ultimately, steam? If the preposterousness of the initial premise doesn't put you off - the British Army sending a piano tuner to the far reaches of empire - in this case, the road to Mandalay - just to comply with the eccentric caprice of a supposedly indispensable martinet - then you do get some enjoyment from the first hundred or so pages. However, suspicions begin to set in when, for example, our hero tuner meets, during one stage of his mammoth journey, a bizarre `native' who relates to him, what the reader supposes to be a portentous tale only for this to prove to have been something of a `red herring'! So the first signs of irritation become apparent and as our Marlow-like hero penetrates further into the unknown, along the Irrawaddy, a la, Heart of Darkness, he eventually meets his Kurtz who turns out to be something of a bore! The one hope the reader has is that the enigmatic guide, a beautiful Burmese woman, for whom Drake, the tuner, develops an infatuation, actually becomes his lover, simply to make the story more interesting.

Ultimately nothing of any interest does develop, not even the dreary Drake and the prose, initially, quite commanding and sure, becomes, along with the `story', merely turgid and ultimately, extremely irritating.

Apparently, it's to be turned into a film to be directed by, wait for it....yes, so, so predictably by Werner Herzog!

"Let me tell you a story" the old man said. "What is the story about?" replied the boy, his eyes bright with anticipation. "A book" said the old man as he settled into his favorite chair. "Is it a good book?" asked the boy. "Listen to the story, then you can decide yourself." And so he began, "There was a writer who loved words, and he loved to put them together into beautiful sentences. His words made the world of old Burma come alive. Spice scents fill the air, flowers glow like beacons, insects sing in the humid, fertile wet-lands. He decided in order to describe this hypnotic place someone from far away would have to view it for the first time. The traveler's reactions would give him an opportunity to write in rich detail about it. This made the man very happy." "So far I quite like this book" smiled the boy. But the old man held up his hand and continued,"And because the feeling of the place was so magical to the writer, he wove fantasies, strange tales, and many dreams into his book." "I like those things" said the boy, "but baba, what is the book about?" "Here is where the problems lie", sighed the man. "The writer made up a very strange circumstance to allow his traveler to reach Burma. It is a circumstance that would never happen, and even as you read his beautiful sentences, you know this." "Well then, what of the traveler?" asked the boy, "will I love him, or hate him, or find him an interesting human being?" "I'm afraid not" sighed the man, "He is almost bloodless in his interaction with the world. As an observer, he is first rate, but that is all. He is a tool to allow the writer to express his lovely words. One thing the traveler does very well though, is he falls into deep reverie, almost a trance, often. Other times he dozes, even in the midst of historical meetings. And when he is in either of these half-waking states, wonderful things happen. Candles glow golden against crimson silks, chopped peppers the color of ox-blood sit pungently in bowls, and bright water courses down beautiful tanned arms of Burmese women" "Well then, is the book well put together?" the youngster asked. "There are many strange things in the make-up of this book" the man replied, "A piano is carried on a journey, by six strong men who find it arduous. Yet, a man and 3 young boys are able to easily lift the piano off a raft while it floats on a river. Quotation marks come and go. Often entire conversations take place without them. I wondered if this was done on purpose to catch the reader off guard, to make one feel off-kilter." "Hmmmm" pondered the boy, "so far you have told me many things about this book, but you did not tell me if you enjoyed it." "I suspended the need for a believable plot or deep characterizations, so yes, I enjoyed reading it" replied the man "but not as much, I suspect, as the author enjoyed writing it."

You know, I'm not sure what to say about this book. The premise intriqued me--a London piano tuner who specializes in Erard pianos is summoned by the army to go to Burma to tune and fix a piano belonging to a key soldier/doctor in England's army.

The author has done his research--he just as easily talks about tuning techniques and the history of the Erard piano as he does the history of Burma.

Of course, he lived in Burma.

The book takes a while to get into. It has long histories of Burma disguised as letters and preparation papers for the piano tuner. And the piano tuner responds to these by writing his own letter of the history of the Erard.

To be honest, I never figured out why those were necessary.

The language at times his initimate with the piano tuner and other times distant. I think it begins distant and moves closer and closer to him.

Once the tuner gets to Burma (which takes a while and is full of extraneous but at times beautiful stories), the story picks up. That's when I got into it. The piano tuner is swept up by the beauty of Burma--the country and the culture--and by the politics. Unknowingly he becomes involved in espionage? salvation? council? with the eccentric soldier/doctor who has managed peace with the locals through medicine and music, much to the chagrin of officers who wish to use the war for their own ambitions.

The book shows the confusion of war, the messiness not in the blood shed but in the policies.

But that is not its main point.

I don't think. It's about the piano tuner's journey, what he learns about himself in the process. He's completely in love with his wife, who encourages him to go on this journey, but he falls in love with a local beauty. I never understood this.

While we're at it: another thing I didn't understand--he seems perfectly content, but there are a couple of places when he has this attitude of "get the hell outta Dodge." I know better than anyone these contradicting feelings, but Mason never pulled it off, I didn't feel. I didn't get why he really left.

There are moments of beauty, and, as I said, once the tuner gets to Burma, you get more into his head, but I don't think I'd recommend this book. I enjoyed it for the most part. Nothing really new--the old romantic books (not as in love romance but as in sentimentality).

In October 1886, Edgar Drake receives an odd telegram from the British War Offices. The telegram contains a request that he leave his wife in London to travel the jungles of Burma, where he'd find an Erard grand piano that is in need of repairing. The piano belongs to an army surgeon major by the name of Anthony Carroll, whose eccentric peacemaking techniques include music, poetry, and medicine. As Drake travels through Europe, the Red Sea, India, and into Burma, Drake meets all sorts of people and learns of their stories.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason is a wonderful novel. Although slow to get through in the beginning, it starts to pick up when the journey begins. Each new cultural experience Drake encounters draws in the reader with the desire to know more. If you are looking for a book that you can't put down, one that is adventurous and touching at the same time, The Piano Turner is an excellent choice.

Feels like Apocolypse Now in some ways. A good book with vivid imagery and character descriptions...it drew me in and I wanted to see where the story went.