“The Noise of Time” by Julian Barnes,

is a fascinating read. It is set in Russia in the time of Stalin and Khrushchev, and describes the life, loves and fears of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich. Though hugely successful as a composer he had his problems with the state machinery. It is a time when people just disappear, never to be seen again. Their crime, if it can be called a crime, is that they have in some way crossed a line, usually without even recognizing there was a line to cross, and by so doing they have incurred the wrath or intolerance of someone in Pravda or in the higher inner circle of government. When still a young man he suspects he has somehow crossed that mystical line and night after night he sits next to the lift outside his apartment waiting for the men to come and take him away. He chose to sit next to the lift to save his young wife and child seeing their husband and father being unceremoniously dragged away. Throughout his life he wanted only to compose music and resisted, though finally unsuccessfully and much to his shame, being a pawn manipulated by the state. It is a deeply moving book about that famous but mostly timid composer who only asserts himself when his back is really to the wall.
Like all Barnes’ books, it is very well written. Nor is it long (180 pages) so would be ideal material for discussion by a reading group.

Bernard Gallivan
March 2018