Simon Silber: Works For Solo Piano - Tapa blanda

The publishers are describing this debut as 'a wickedly funny commentary on art, genius, jealousy and failure'. Which it is - to a point. The conceit is very promising: failed philosopher with delusions of grandeur answers want ad for composer seeking biographer. Norman Fayrewether Jr's lumbering commentary on the short life and unperformed music of Simon Silber is, inevitably, lacking in insight, but as he exacts revenge on the now late genius he unwittingly reveals a great deal about himself. Most of the humour within requires a certain level of musical knowledge, but Miller's is a novel you very much want to like. By mid-point, however, there's an inescapable sense that he's trying too hard. And the joke wears thin. Somewhere within lurks a good short story, but the novel hints at interesting things to come.

A sparkling, witty and clever first novel from young American writer Christopher Miller, purporting to be the liner notes of a boxed set of recordings of music by the recently deceased modernist composer Simon Silber, written by the man engaged by him as his biographer before he dies. In the course of the increasingly discursive liner notes we realise that a) the composer was probably crazy; b) a charlatan; c) the biographer hated him; and d) might well have had more than a little to do with the composer's early death... SIMON SILBER is a wickedly funny commentary on art, genius, jealousy and failure.