Great writers make words sing on the page. These five authors, including Rose Tremain and Ian McEwan, put music on the main stage
Virginia Woolf thought about her books as music before she wrote them; Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez listened to vallenato, a style of Colombian folk music, when he worked and even went so far as to describe One Hundred Years of Solitude as “a vallenato of 400 pages”. But writing about music itself is no mean feat. In my debut, The Instrumentalist, my solution was to make music tangible. I gave my lead character synaesthesia, and let the notes pour through windows and sweep over the rooftops of Venice. Here are five books about classical music that I think offer a virtuosic performance.
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The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable is published by Bloomsbury on 15 August. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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