The Noise of Time by Julian BarnesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm not a lover of fictionalised accounts of real peoples
lives but I seem to have picked up a few recently. This was a book club
read and I did manage to finish it. Barnes as usual writes well and has
clearly done his background reading of the Shostakovitch biographies
which he references in the Afterward, but I can only ever wonder which
parts are truth and which are the fiction. What he does do well is
expound upon the questions of courage and cowardice, conscience and
survival, Power and art. At times it reminded me of Kafka, or of
Solzhenitsyn. It does however read well the reader does not really need
to know much about this musician to go with the flow of the novel and I
mean that as a plus point. Mainly written as an interior monologue
Barnes covers the denunciation of Shostakovitch, his visit to the USA
and his joining of the Communist Party. Since this final act is a
humiliation beyond all the others the story line is a sad one of a
fearful artist, manipulated by and submitting to political dogma.
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