Sublime

Disarmingly simple sentences and paragraphs knit together to form a beautiful piece of writing. Julian Barnes at the height of his game.

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A warning against populism.

If you could sum up The Noise of Time in three words, what would they be?

An important account of art's relationship to power.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Focussed more on the period of the seige of Leningrad.

Would you be willing to try another one of Daniel Philpott’s performances?

Not if he reads foreign voices in such a stereotyped manner, though the narration is fine when it is close to Shostakovich.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Stalin's musical tastes.

Any additional comments?

The Noise of Time doesn’t quite work as a novel but is still fascinating as an account of Dmitri Shostakovich’s very difficult, and potentially fatal, relationship with Stalin’s and then Krushchev’s USSR. Although Julian Barnes deals with chronology in an absorbing way, covering the years between the 1920s and the 1960s, this novel is too driven by the desire to spell out those difficulties, notably, as Shostakovich puts it, “that it was impossible to tell the truth here and live.” Finishing a symphony in a minor rather than major key could lead to imprisonment and even execution if the State, and particularly its leader, took against you. However, Shostakovich’s voice is too uniform and analytical to attract much emotional attachment on the part of the reader -- it doesn’t help in the audio-version to have official voices read in a mock-Russian accent -- though the intermittent story it tells is dramatic, beginning, as it does, with Shostakovich waiting by the lift in his apartment block in Leningrad in 1937 for his expected arrest. Although this was the fate of an almost incalculable number of Soviet citizens, particularly in the years before and after the Moscow Trials, Barnes is drawn to the dilemmas and compromises of a world-famous musician, who is even obliged publically to criticize his hero, Stravinsky, and to compose populist works and avoid anything that hinted at the great political sin of formalism. Near the end of the novel, with Shostakovich reinstated but, in his own eyes and those of most critics outside the USSR, diminished, he comments on an ironic gap that he sought to retain between how he had to behave and compose and how he really felt. Even, here, though, he admits that irony can be corrosive for the ironist, who may resort to critical allusions in his music that, probably, no one else noticed.

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6 people found this helpful

The noise in his head

The rambling style creates a sense of the listener partaking of Shostakovich's mind. An excellent novel, convincingly performed by Daniel Philpott

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10 people found this helpful

No prior knowledge required!

Shostakovich. A name I recognised as a composer but that's about it. Yet this doesn't matter with Barnes. Just as in his wonderful Flaubert's Parrot, the man behind the artist is sketched and draws you in. I've since read Flaubert and will now listen to some Shostakovich. That's how good Julian Barnes and his stories are.

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6 people found this helpful

Great blend

It’s not often you get to read an abridged autobiography and a contemporary assessment of Shostakovich’s actual mind. It’s an interpretation that takes you slowly by the collar and pulls you in.
Narration was perfection. The last two sentences truly masterful indeed.

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4 people found this helpful

Interesting

Not my favorite Julian Barnes, but interesting story for someone who's not familiar with Russian history and classical music.

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Good story, bad narrator

I feel a bit bad for the narrator as he did his best, but his voice was nasal and his delivery off-putting and lacking the gravitas to deliver the story. I considered ditching the whole book in chapter 1 for this reason but stuck it out for what was a good story, heavy on foreboding and irony.

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Hey, Shosti......Nabokov and the CIA

Any personal consideration of this novel is driven initially by a comparison to David Pownall’s 'Master Class' which I saw in around 1983 at the Theatre Royal Newcastle. The pairing of Shostakovich and Stalin was, in that instance complemented with the appearance on stage of Zhdanov and Prokofiev. I remember thinking that the get-together was a fantastic pretense and a wonderful construct on which questions of artistic intention and integrity were played out with lots of laughs, some real reflection and great skill on the part of Trevor Cooper.

In Julian Barnes’ novel the focus is entirely personal, built around a series of historic events rather than a single pivot. Its a more natural choice for a novel, of course, and these days its great to be able to quickly interrogate the British Pathé archive viewing the arrival of Shostakovich in New York as described and do the background checks on Nicolas Nabokov and the CIA.

Entirely satisfying? Not really. Unlike The Sense Of An Ending there is no sense of an edge in that, where historical facts are blended into the narrative, there is no clear cut between that inventive narrative fiction and documentary. That impacted my reading of the latest effort from a great contemporary novelist - not to say that the novel represents beautiful clear writing stopping off at all of the important emotional and intellectual points along the way to enjoy the view. A struggle between 4 and 5 star stuff although I am sure that the author didn’t trouble himself with my tape-measure considerations. A victim of his own high standards in this case, perhaps and emblematic of its subject.

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4 people found this helpful

Learned about Stalin's Russia

Interesting listen. Learned what life was like in Soviet Russia for now well known composers such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich; learned a little if the political climate there comparative to Western politics and art appreciation. I had no idea that these well known Soviet composers, indeed Soviet music and art, was totally state run and monitored.

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3 people found this helpful

Unexpected Pleasure

It's a book that requires concentration and I had to go back to the beginning a few times. However, it was well worth the effort. As would be expected, the writing is tight, the characters well drawn and learning about something of the Russian political systems was a bonus.

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