Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Mariner Books (2005), Edition: 1, Paperback, 232 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: The Courage Consort, possibly the seventh best-known a cappella vocal ensemble in Britain, are given two weeks in a Belgian chateau to rehearse their latest commission, the monstrously complicated Partitum Mutante. But can the piece be performed? Does it matter that its composer is a maniac best known for attacking his wife with a stiletto shoe at the baggage reclaim of Milan airport? Can the five members of the Consort endure their own sexual tensions and wildly differing temperaments? And what is the inhuman voice that calls out to them from the woods at night? The esoteric world of avant-garde classical music is the unlikely setting for a story of rare power - perhaps the most moving Michel Faber has yet written..… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Cariola
I agree that Faber's writing here is exquisite; too bad the quality of the stories did not match it. I found them to be rather bland and predictable, and I never got involved with any of the characters.
LibraryThing member michaeldwebb
I bought this as I absolutely adored The Crimson Petal and the White. This is really different. For a start, it's really short, and the writing is far less stylised. It's unusual story, about a small avant garde choir, and enjoyable enough, but very slight. There's not really enough time for any of
Note: Looking at the other reviews, it looks like other additions had three stories - mine, an ebook addition, only had one, called the Courage Consort, so check what you are buying!
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the characters (which are a really just stereotypes) to get much of a personality. If this had been built up to a full novel, I would have probably really, really loved it, but as it was, it just didn't give enough. Still worth reading I guess, if only for the unusual subject matter.Note: Looking at the other reviews, it looks like other additions had three stories - mine, an ebook addition, only had one, called the Courage Consort, so check what you are buying!
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LibraryThing member edwinbcn
Another uninspiring read, bland & unintersting, with an oddly large sprawling of Dutch words and expressions.
LibraryThing member imyril
The Fahrenheit Twins is by far the strongest (as well as the shortest) of the three novellas contained here, an intriguing 4* Garden of Eden tale set in the Arctic. The other two are instantly and entirely forgettable, being awkwardly written and peopled with unlikeable characters who don't ring
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true - but curiously republished without the Twins as "The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps". Show Less
LibraryThing member WorldInColour
What to say, what to say. The Courage Consort is a somewhat disfunctional choir group that retreats to a castle in Belgium to practice a complicated avant-garde musical piece. Focus is on the relationships between the characters, and Faber manages to present these in an adequately interesting way.
I do however feel that there are a lot of loose ends. Some interesting characteristics are brought forward, but are never really developed throughout the story. This leaves the reader with a novella that could have been so much more than just a novella. Which is a pity.
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I do however feel that there are a lot of loose ends. Some interesting characteristics are brought forward, but are never really developed throughout the story. This leaves the reader with a novella that could have been so much more than just a novella. Which is a pity.
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LibraryThing member nordie
This is a short, tight, novella, with nary a spare word used.
It is the story of a 5 piece acapella group, who have agreed to try out a new piece written by a very rich (and somewhat "otherworldy" mentally) German and get two weeks in a Belgian Château to practise. The novella starts with Catherine
They meet up at the Château and there are soon tensions (both mental and sexual) underlying the daily practising. Dagmar - the other female in the group, who has brought her baby son Axel with her - loves biking and mountaineering, and soon begins an unlikely friendship with Catherine simply by going out biking daily and inviting Catherine to come with her. Daily exercise, with someone who doesnt seem to judge her or put her under pressure (plus no longer taking the anti depressants) goes much to changing Catherine during the book, to the point where casual acquaintances dont recognise her at first.
Catherine's insomnia makes her thing she hears human like cries in the woods at night Dagmar says she doesnt hear them. Catherine goes out walking one night, spending all night in the wood and comes back the following morning in a dream like state; what happened over night and whether the screams were real are never revealed, which some readers find frustrating, but if the novella is read as a traditional Gothic novel (The Mysteries of Udolpho, or Jane Austen's wind up of "Northanger Abbey") then these situations rarely are.
Catherine is the most rounded of the characters in the book, with the others being a bit one dimensional, but that is in part because Catherine has spent so long in her own world she hasnt been interested in anyone else, so only knows what she knows. She grows the most, since that at the beginning she doesnt even know what time of day it is, at the end she is making decisions for the group and is able to put her foot down to her husband
A question I ask when reading short stories and novellas: Could the story still stand if it was longer? This one I dont know, maybe adding in a little character development of the other 4 singers, expanding on the sexual tension outside of Roger and Catherine, but there is little more that I would add.
It is the story of a 5 piece acapella group, who have agreed to try out a new piece written by a very rich (and somewhat "otherworldy" mentally) German and get two weeks in a Belgian Château to practise. The novella starts with Catherine
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- married to the group's founder Roger Courage - coming out the other side of psychological problems, which include depression and a hinted-at suicide attempt the year before.They meet up at the Château and there are soon tensions (both mental and sexual) underlying the daily practising. Dagmar - the other female in the group, who has brought her baby son Axel with her - loves biking and mountaineering, and soon begins an unlikely friendship with Catherine simply by going out biking daily and inviting Catherine to come with her. Daily exercise, with someone who doesnt seem to judge her or put her under pressure (plus no longer taking the anti depressants) goes much to changing Catherine during the book, to the point where casual acquaintances dont recognise her at first.
Catherine's insomnia makes her thing she hears human like cries in the woods at night Dagmar says she doesnt hear them. Catherine goes out walking one night, spending all night in the wood and comes back the following morning in a dream like state; what happened over night and whether the screams were real are never revealed, which some readers find frustrating, but if the novella is read as a traditional Gothic novel (The Mysteries of Udolpho, or Jane Austen's wind up of "Northanger Abbey") then these situations rarely are.
Catherine is the most rounded of the characters in the book, with the others being a bit one dimensional, but that is in part because Catherine has spent so long in her own world she hasnt been interested in anyone else, so only knows what she knows. She grows the most, since that at the beginning she doesnt even know what time of day it is, at the end she is making decisions for the group and is able to put her foot down to her husband
A question I ask when reading short stories and novellas: Could the story still stand if it was longer? This one I dont know, maybe adding in a little character development of the other 4 singers, expanding on the sexual tension outside of Roger and Catherine, but there is little more that I would add.
Show Less
Subjects
Original publication date
2002
Physical description
232 p.; 7.96 inches
ISBN
0156032767 / 9780156032766