The Melody, Jim Crace
The Melody, Jim Crace
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The Melody

Author: Jim Crace

Narrator: Nicholas Guy Smith

Unabridged: 8 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/19/2018


Synopsis

Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is viciously attacked by an intruder in his own courtyard—bitten and scratched. He insists his assailant was neither man nor animal.

Soon, Busi’s account of what happened is being embellished to fan the flames of old rumor—of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest. It is also used to spark new controversy, inspiring claims that something must finally be done about the town’s poor, whose numbers have been growing.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit

The Melody is a bleak satire with a slight hint at parable. The old and widowed singer and songwriter lives alone in the large dilapidated villa by the sea… One unrestful night he is bitten and badly scratched by some wild creature foraging in his larder… Very soon, in a second, probably, and at least......more

Goodreads review by Doug

Although I've only read a few of his books, Crace's last one, 2013's 'Harvest', was my favorite to win that year's Booker Prize (alas, it didn't!), and I was saddened to learn he was planning to retire from writing and there would be no new Crace novels. Lucky for us, he decided against that plan an......more

He teased a phrase that might reveal a melody, if he worked on it. Would he find the energy to work on it. He hadn’t written anything worthwhile for a year and more, so why continue now Jim Crace’s previous novel was the outstanding Harvest, which he announced at the time as his last novel. It wa......more


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