BOOK REVIEW: ‘Love is Blind’ by William Boyd

OPINION:

LOVE IS BLIND: A NOVEL

By William Boyd

Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 384 pages

Three cheers for William Boyd! For he’s a jolly good novelist, and his new novel “Love Is Blind” is a masterpiece of storytelling.

Perhaps it could be described as “old-fashioned storytelling” because it’s set in the late-19th century and, like most 19th-century fictions, it grabs the reader and doesn’t let go until the last page. But “old-fashioned” has a pejorative whiff about it, suggesting something dated, a little unadventurous, boring. In this case, however, the storytelling is pure literary pleasure.

Its center is Brodie Moncur, son of a hateful Scottish preacher. Brodie has perfect pitch, and he’s so good at tuning pianos that an Edinburgh piano manufacturer dispatches him to the company’s Paris office. Among Brodie’s many entrepreneurial ideas is sponsoring a celebrity pianist to play the firm’s pianos at every concert. John Kilbarron, known as the “Irish Liszt,” takes up the offer, but a lifetime of virtuoso playing has left him with severe pain in his hand. When Brodie helps by tuning his piano to respond to the lightest touch, Kilbarron insists that he travel with him so he will always be on hand to work his tuning magic.

Traveling means also being with Kilbarron’s brother Malachi, and with his Russian mistress Lika Blum. Immediately, Brodie distrusts and dislikes Malachi, while falling head over heels for Lika. Their affair takes them from Parisian hotels to Russian dachas, from housekeeping in Nice to teaching in Biarritz. It also leads to a duel, and then to sojourns in Trieste and finally in the Andaman Islands.

William Boyd evokes these locales by accounts of Brodie’s lodgings and meals, his tinkerings with pianos, his wanderings through the streets, his encounters with people in bars and theaters — people that are sharply drawn and interesting, even when they appear in just a scene or two.

The twin engineers of Brodie’s many moves are the doctors who tell him to seek a warm climate for his health, and Malachi Kilbarron, who stalks him mercilessly. Malign, malicious, a virtual namesake for Brodie’s horrible father Malky, Malachi’s appearance in seemingly safe havens dogs the course of Brodie’s life. How does he discover where Brodie is living? Why does he stalk him so relentlessly? Though eventually Malachi has grounds for his animosity, his animus against Brodie predates them. Why is that?

Curiosity about Malachi keeps readers’ noses on the trail of answers. So does Lika. Invariably seen through Brodie’s eyes, she is sympathetic, sometimes amusing, but also driven by mysterious motives. If Malachi is devil of this tale, Lika is its goddess, manifesting herself benignly, then withdrawing, leaving Brodie wracked with questions about her past. “What did he really know of Lika Blum? Really understand?” he asks himself. “And the answer followed: only what she had wanted him to know. It didn’t matter how well you thought you knew someone, he realized. You saw what you wanted to see or you saw what the other person wanted you to see. People were opaque; another person was a mystery.”

Lika has a little dog. Admirers of Chekhov will recall his story about another appealing Russian woman “The Lady with the Dog.” They will also spot that in French — the language Brodie and Lika use — Brodie’s surname translates as “my dog.” And, too, that Brodie’s letter upbraiding his brother for copying his father’s abusive behavior to his wife mimics a one on the same topic that Chekhov wrote to his brother. These are more shades of Chekhov flitting through the novel — reminders that, like Chekhov, William Boyd focuses on how his characters “love, marry, have children, die and how they talk.”

Another pervasive literary presence is Robert Louis Stevenson, whose books Brodie reads at lonely times. Stevenson wrote twistier tales than Chekhov’s, and populated them with frightening men such as Long John Silver and Edward Hyde, who are cut from the same cloth as Malky Moncur and Malachi Kilbarron.

Such allusions are one of the many joys of “Love is Blind.” So are the chunks of random general information. There are lots of details about piano tuning, and some about music in general. Then there are set pieces such as the descriptions Malky’s church and his compelling sermon on an obscure text from the Apocrypha, and another of a Russian dacha near a down-at-heel town, and yet another about the sexual practices of the Andaman Islanders.

This compendium of details is one treat in this treasure chest of a novel. Among other delights are the varied settings, the literary godfathers, and vivid characters, including both those scary villains and a vibrant supporting cast featuring Brodie’s bosses John Kilbarron and Ainsley Channon, and the numerous energetic bit players. There’s just so much to discover and enjoy.

• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.