oh, that book about ...

A morning car conversation about a string quartet, with colleagues after a meeting, reminded me of Vikram Seth's novel An Equal Music.

There are two tracks to this novel. One is about a love affair that ended, and the two main characters' attempts to revive it.

But the more interesting track is Seth's ability to recreate for the reader the world of the professional musician, and in this case, one who is part of a string quartet.

I've often wondered what is going on in a dog's world, one made up less of sight, certainly devoid of the visual that I experience, but that is full of smells and sounds unknown to me. Spend a little time with a dog twice a day on walks, and you will understand that their language, their efforts to communicate, is hardly summed up by the vocal sounds of their barks. To me, that's an invisible world, or a nearly invisible world.

In An Equal Music, Seth writes about the world of musicians working together, each individual artists, highly trained, putting aside their individual quirks to make music. For us lesser mortals who are not musicians, or who only know such a little as to make this work, both technical and intuitive, at best an unknown tongue, we sit and listen to the result, hearing the power and beauty or dissonance of the work being performed.

His novel gives us a peak at what maybe happening in their world.