This notice will only appear in version 4 or earlier browsers. This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device. Please consider upgrading to the new versions of Netscape, Internet Explorer, or Opera. You can do this here. All are available for download, free of charge. Thanks.
Press review for Music, in a Foreign Language
"For the first forty pages of this novel I had doubts. A wandering introduction
and then a variety of narrative layers - the narrator's thoughts about how his story first came to him, the story itself and then the stories within that story - took a great deal of time to work through. A whole book of this, I thought, and my head is going to turn itself inside out. Thankfully, Crumey lets up in places. At the point where our rambling narrator begins the story proper, that of a young man and a woman who meet by chance on a train, the tale gathers enough pace to propel you through the constant self-reflexivity. When we enter the story within the story - the life of the young man's father-it chugs along very nicely indeed. But it's not really the kind of book that's about pace. It's an intensely philosophical book, toying with big ideas. Like the way in which coincidence and apparently insignificant decisions can determine our fate. Or the infinite number of 'what if's created at each of these moments: alternate realities that might have been. He shows this in grand scale with his setting - a Britain that was invaded by Germany, and eventually went on to become a Communist regime - and in smaller scale with his characters - a missed train leads on to a chance meeting, and then love. By reminding you of the artifice of fiction, he calls into question the truth of history. An inventive structure and big ideas alone don't make a good book. It's to Crumey's credit that he fuses them with strong characters to create a story that's as emotionally involving as it is cerebrally stimulating."