The Melody - Tapa dura

As touching as a well-made melody * Daily Telegraph * Terrific . . . part political allegory, part dream and part deeply tender meditation on grief * Metro * Jim Crace writes with great flair and inimitable imagination . . . The Melody is a lyrical and tender meditation on marital love and loss that further secures his position as one of Britain's most distinctive and accomplished novelists . . . The simplicity, poise and conversation elegance of Crace's prose allows him to give full rein to the expression of emotion . . . A book at once full of wry humour and achingly sad, The Melody is every bit as strange, other-worldly, and finely wrought as readers have come to expect of Crace. This is a fine contribution to the oeuvre of perhaps the most underrated novelist writing in English today. * Financial Times * If the novel has a political agenda, it resides in its interlocking parables of gentrification and the stigmatization of the poor . . . impeccably wrought * TLS * The book retains a lingering power - not least in Crace's gentle reminder that, although the personal may well be political, it's often easier to pretend otherwise -- Anthony Cummins * Observer * A powerful novel about music, human nature and poverty . . . only Kazuo Ishiguro rivals Crace's range in terms of emotional power and unusual subject matter * Financial Times * Throughout the book, Crace's measured, subtly captivating prose is often exquisite . . . A fine book about ageing and grief and the way in which the folkloric can impact upon real life, it's another choice example of this twice-Booker-nominated English writer's unique gift * National * An ambitious, powerful work which won't disappoint his growing band of enthusiasts * Big Issue * Hypnotic and powerful . . . enchanting and disconcerting . . . The Melody is a reminder that we neither own nor control the natural world * Irish Times * The Melody is at its most poignant on the subject of growing old . . . every sentence is packed with Crace's characteristic lyricism . . . Anybody who reads The Melody will find plenty to admire and chew on * The Times * The Melody takes its place among his finest [novels] . . . grippingly symbolic and intensely real . . . an ecological fable for modern times * Guardian * This could have been a straightforward political allegory about man's inhumanity to man . . . but Crace's seductively atmospheric novel, suffused as it is with archetypes and the stuff of dreams, is much richer, slyer and more mysterious. It's an elegy, too - for lost love, youth and talent - and deeply moving * Daily Mail * Strange, unsettling, brilliant - everything you'd expect from one of our most original and inventive novelists * Observer *