An Equal Music By Vikram Seth Book Review
Harsimran kaur ON Feb 09, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, AN EQUAL MUSIC BY VIKRAM SETH-FICTION
Rating: 5/5
It is natural to fall in love; each and every decibel conjuring a staccato of indissoluble longing, a fondness so peculiar to seep through the peripatetic melodies of human phantasmagoria. Isn’t it a touch of bitter truths that ordain the past to be a silent spectator of the present that’s waits with a vague foreboding incase bemuses could turn into a symphonic rivulet of the love lost?
Michael lost Julia a decade back—an undetachable string still looms to tie their blemished past, if life does give a second chance. But life can be unfair; its perfidy may subsume you, leaving behind unbridled patches with ruffled edges breaking sanguinity of the forgone love.
Michael and Julia meet again, their music brings them together and life does give them a second chance to revive their shaken truths and misaligned turfs. Julia, a Pianist, is now married and has a son.
Michael, a violinist with a Maggiore Quartet, will not stew his own grain now. He feels this indelible pulsation to give Julia all the love that precipitates as a forsaken scourge.
But, when has life professed its irony in the most subtle way? Diaphanous in its dampness, it sticks to our distresses giving us no clue if it is to protect or to fret.
Michael and Julia’s bloom of long-lost love is ephemeral, for the entire decade, Julia has nurtured her married life and feels a dire need to protect it. She carries a burden of a secret that Michael must know. Vikram Seth presents a beautiful love story, ‘An Equal Music’ that transcends time and vicissitudes of life.
From the structural orbital swathes of the London City, Michael and Julia Travel a path to resurface a lovers again. Their enchanting hues are a shadow where their souls play a rhythm of Beethoven’s magic and equally inclined are their desperate pleas to protect each other. Don’t we all know that love never embarks with a sledge hammer; all it consumes with its bare eyes is the distortion of impulses life throws on you to justify its ambiguity.
TAKE AWAY
The poetic precision of Vikram Seth to bring out the nuances of human affiliations is heart touching. He brings in focus a love story that cuts barriers. But, isn’t it a folly of human nature to make long entangled wires around it if fear attempts to grind the pieces left behind. This is the story of Michael and Julia, where love is not a weakness but a resoluteness to carry forward life with aplomb.