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A review by x_miss_mcrae_x
The Variations by Patrick Langley
3.5
Synopsis- Selda Heddle, a famously reclusive composer, is found dead in a snowy field near her Cornish home. She was educated at Agnes's Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children, which for centuries has offered its young wards a grounding in the gift - an inherited ability to tune into the voices and sounds of the past. When she dies, Selda's gift passes down to her grandson Wolf, who must make sense of her legacy, and learn to live with the newly unleashed voices in his head. Ambitious and exhilarating, The Variations is a novel of startling originality about music and the difficulty - or impossibility - of living with the past.
Review- The book is told through 3 different points of view... Selda, Wolf (Selda's grandson) and Ellen (the dene of the hospice). It heavily surrounds music and a "gift" that connects those with this gift to the dead through music, though I'm still not 100% sure how this gift actually worked.
On a whole, it is a beautifully written story and very detailed. I loved Wolf's POV more than the other and the unusual way the story is told by going further back in time rather than forwards. The only complaint i have is that, at times the book was almost too wordy and over-descriptive, that some chapters became really hard to get through.
Review- The book is told through 3 different points of view... Selda, Wolf (Selda's grandson) and Ellen (the dene of the hospice). It heavily surrounds music and a "gift" that connects those with this gift to the dead through music, though I'm still not 100% sure how this gift actually worked.
On a whole, it is a beautifully written story and very detailed. I loved Wolf's POV more than the other and the unusual way the story is told by going further back in time rather than forwards. The only complaint i have is that, at times the book was almost too wordy and over-descriptive, that some chapters became really hard to get through.