My debut novel The Hands of Pianists is officially out tomorrow. (Please see good online bookstores for details.)
Hands has received some quite amazing recommendations. The great Liszt pianist Leslie Howard calls it ‘rich and remarkable’. W. G. Sebald scholar Dr Deane Blackler says it ‘offers much to reflect on, a great deal to admire, and perhaps a little to fear’. Golden-voiced Colin Fox, formerly of ABC Classic and these days a presenter at radio 3MBS, would like Hands sub-titled Killer Pianos.
My novel is 80,000 words of unashamed literary fiction interspersed with grainy black-and-white photographs, a style brought to its zenith by the great German writer W. G. Sebald in his four ‘prose fictions’. Hands tells the tale of a neurotic freelance writer who aims to prove that pianos kill elite pianists. He has grappled for decades with the guilt that followed an accident in which he severed his talented sister’s fingers, ending her promising keyboard career. (She subsequently committed suicide.)
The narrator researches the violent deaths at 31 of three great pianists, aiming to prove that pianos — instead of a DC-6, a car accident, and a draught of cyanide — killed the young men. His quest takes him from Melbourne to Geelong and Sydney, then the south of France, London, Sussex, and the Czech Republic.