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The Pianoplayers
Hardcover in very good condition. First edition. Review sheets laid in. Light shelfwear to the jacket. Pages are clean and sound; all text is clear. CM
208 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1986
5 people are currently reading
471 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Burgess
358 books4,292 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
January 25, 2014
Burgess gets constant acclaim for A Clockwork Orange, and rightly so. But this novel is sadly underrated and deserves an earnest read. It draws on memories of his own father playing piano in bars, but uses this setting as a soundtrack to a young girl exploring her sexuality and coming to terms with her body and her powers over how it's used. It is hilarious and gratifying, and in typical Burgess fashion, an inimitable and unforgettable example of authorial voice.
October 6, 2017
Meh. Not my cuppa tea. I'm not prude by any means so it wasn't the subject matter that had me turning my nose up. I just didn't particularly care for the way this was written, i.e., a woman telling her story to a writer who is apparently writing it down word for word. It felt sloppy and rambling.
I never developed an emotional connection to any character in this. It's one of the reasons it took me so long to read (it's not a very long book). Without that connection, I had no reason to want or NEED to pick the book back up again.
Disappointed. This was my first Burgess book. I'm not feeling particularly inspired to pick up another one.
Read more of this review here: https://raeleighreads.wordpress.com/2...
I never developed an emotional connection to any character in this. It's one of the reasons it took me so long to read (it's not a very long book). Without that connection, I had no reason to want or NEED to pick the book back up again.
Disappointed. This was my first Burgess book. I'm not feeling particularly inspired to pick up another one.
Read more of this review here: https://raeleighreads.wordpress.com/2...
July 16, 2018
Alte Männer sollten nicht über die Sexualität von jungen Mädchen schreiben, insbesondere dann nicht, wenn sie glauben, dass diese während eines Missbrauchs durch ebenjene alten Männer erwachen würde. Auch davon abgesehen läuft die Geschichte relativ ziellos ins Nichts.
April 9, 2018
There was a time when I was a HUGE Anthony Burgess fan. After seeing A Clockwork Orange at the movies, I raced to the library and checked out the book. LOVED IT! I then binged on Burgess: Honey for the Bears, The Wanting Seed. One Hand Clapping. On and on.
While looking for another book in the B shelves I recently spied The Pianoplayers. I checked it out for old times sake.
A waste of time. After Ellen's father died, about halfway through, this whole book ran out of gas. Ran out of direction. Ran out of my patience.
While looking for another book in the B shelves I recently spied The Pianoplayers. I checked it out for old times sake.
A waste of time. After Ellen's father died, about halfway through, this whole book ran out of gas. Ran out of direction. Ran out of my patience.
July 5, 2020
Like listening to your grandmother telling stories endlessly, except that this old woman is telling the story of how she became a prostitute, interspersed with stories about the piano-players in her life. The writing is witty, entertaining and at times hilarious, but I found it too dirty, and it is a far cry from the brilliance of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. (Of course, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE also centres on adult themes with its ultra-violence; I think the genius is in the linguistics rather than the narrative.)
December 15, 2025
Anthony Burgess is one of my great literary heroes. Born in 1917—the same year as my father—he was a middle-aged itinerant teacher[1] who had done some writing on the side (he’d actually published four novels; only for Burgess would that be considered a sideline) when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and given a year to live. Married to an alcoholic and rather hopeless woman (so the story goes; I suspect other motives[2]), he decided to crank his literary career into overdrive in the hope of providing for her. In that year he wrote five and a half novels, including his most famous title (because it was made into a movie) A Clockwork Orange, only to discover that the doctor had made a false diagnosis. Within a few years, in fact, it was his wife who died. But he went on to a long and active career as a writer and musician, producing a huge variety of work, and died at age 76, still furiously working.
It is tempting to look back on a career like that and ask, What is his great, indispensable work? A few months back, in fact, someone did ask a question like that, on Facebook (what is your favorite Burgess novel, aside from A Clockwork Orange? Weirdly for a Burgess fan, I’ve never read that book), and it was tempting to answer with his largest work, Earthly Powers, a huge novel about a Somerset Maugham-esque novelist; I read that book when it came out and enjoyed it immensely. It occurred to me eventually that my favorite work was actually a series, the Enderby novels, about a hapless poet who suffers from severe intestinal distress; there are four in all (though the fourth was a late entry).
But with Burgess, the great thing is the whole life’s work, and unlike other prolific people like Simenon and Wodehouse, the books are not all the same; they’re actually wildly different from one another, even those first five (and a half). A number of his books are experiments in language, as A Clockwork Orange apparently was, and he was an obsessive linguist, obsessed in particular with James Joyce. I read recently that at the end of his life he had been hoping to translate Finnegan’s Wake into Italian, just for the fun of it (not my idea of a good time). But he was just such a Mind, with so many interests (including composing music). It seems petty to separate out one thing and say that is the best.
Burgess was a particular inspiration to me because, when I was 53 and had taken a job at Duke University because we needed for the money, I thought my writing career might be over; I’d always written in a deliberate plodding way (rapid drafts that I worked over endlessly). I had just read the second volume of his autobiography, in which he talked about his strategy during that fateful year: he would compose 1500-2000 words per day, and work them over as much as he wanted that day, but no longer; the next day he would produce that many again. That seemed impossible when I read about it.
Then I thought, what if it’s that or nothing? Also: I’m 53 years old. If I haven’t learned to write a sentence at this point, I might as well quit. Using that method, I was able to compose a shortish book during the course of a summer, and subsequently wrote three novels, followed by a memoir, then another novel. (Only two of the novels have been published, but that’s not my fault.) And now, a year older than Burgess ever got to be, I’m writing about books and movies with the same kind of enthusiasm he brought to it, to his dying day, apparently (he kept asking magazines for assignments). It’s never seemed like work to me. It’s a great way to live.
I reviewed The Pianoplayers for USA Today in 1986, the year it came out. I know that because the little card making the assignment is still paper-clipped to the back book jacket. 500 words, due on October 5th. I loved writing for that paper, because it taught me to shrink reviews to their essence (a talent that I have lost since, obviously). It taught me what book reviewing really was.
There was another harrowing medical trauma in Burgess’ life, though perhaps not in his memory. In 1918, his whole family was infected by the flu epidemic. His mother and sister died (at one point he, at the age of one, was left alone in the house with the two corpses). His father fortunately did not die, but Burgess believed the man had some resentment of the fact that his son had lived, and not the others. Burgess was raised by an aunt for a while, before reuniting with his father once he had remarried. His father worked in a public house owned by the woman he married and played the piano at the place in the evening. Burgess in this novel goes back to that time, but makes piano playing the father’s only means to make money; he also, in the kind of shift that Burgess (and one of his favorite artists, Shakespeare) does rather casually, makes himself a girl.
I suspect that, on the cusp of 70, Burgess wrote this novel in order to reconnect with that period of his life, not just the succession of crummy flats that he lived in, but also the food, which he details endlessly (it’s no wonder that Enderby, and Burgess himself, had intestinal difficulties), and the whole texture of life. Ellen’s father Billy, whose weaknesses are alcohol, bad food, and women, at first plays at silent movies, where he more or less invents the score as he goes along. He gets into various scrapes at work, moving from theater to theater, some far better than others. At one job he teaches his daughter to play, and on one occasion she subs for him (one gets the impression people weren’t there for the music). Eventually, of course, the talkies come along and he’s out of work altogether.
Ellen in the meantime, all alone much of the time and trying to make her way as best she can, supplements their living by taking money for sex, with an older man whose wife has recently died. She understands what’s going on when he asks her back to his flat, but she’s curious, and she and her father could really use the money (she wants her own room in the boarding house, because she’s in her early teens). All this seems mildly unlikely as I write it, but not as I read it; the older man who hangs around the girls’ school isn’t all that unusual a figure, and his approach to Ellen wasn’t threatening. She knew she could handle him. And she wanted that room.
The apotheosis of Billy’s music career comes when an entrepreneur persuades him to take on the task of a marathon concert, 30 straight days with only two two-hour breaks per day. Whether anyone ever did such a thing I have no idea (sounds like a dance marathon), and—spoiler alert—he doesn’t make it, but people come to pay admission especially as things get difficult for him; they like seeing the man suffer. He took the job because he didn’t have another prospect, also because he was hoping to acquire a nest egg so that he and his daughter could travel to America, where he thought he could sell a system he had invented for teaching children the violin (much like the Suzuki method that later became so successful). He doesn’t get there, but the list of songs he resorts to while he is playing is mammoth and hilarious. Eventually he composes his own opera, also other kinds of music; people who were there at the end said his music had become sublime. But he didn’t make thirty days. He didn’t get particularly close.
After that we focus on Ellen’s career, which she mentioned as the novel opened; perhaps because of her early experiences, she becomes a common—actually a rather uncommon—prostitute. At first she works at a house in France that caters to those who want young women, then moves to a place that caters to all kinds of men. She doesn’t go into detail, but seems content with the work.
Eventually she decides that men know nothing about making love to a woman—who needs to be played like a sensitive musical instrument, a piano in particular—and starts a School for Love, along with some other former hookers. She moves back to Great Britain for that, and of course it’s right on the edge of being illegal; it’s more like what we think of nowadays as sexual surrogates. That works out well for her, and for the men as well. By the end of the story she has retired to Provence and is living a life of leisure.
I do wonder what I made of this novel 39 years ago, with the 500 words I had to devote to it. In the larger oeuvre of a man like Burgess, it’s a diversion, something to keep him writing (he could knock this off in a matter of weeks). It’s largely a feast of language, as all of his books are; the plot is secondary (and doesn’t bear terribly hard scrutiny). But the Burgess shelf is full of books like these, deftly written, highly imagined, with just a little corner of experience from his own life. It’s never a mistake to pick up a Burgess novel.
His real name was John Anthony Burgess Wilson. His pen name was a good career move.
[1] Many years later, he made his way to my current home state. Back in the nineties, I taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina for a couple of semesters, and a party around that time I mentioned I was doing that to a guy I’d just met. “I took that class,” he said. “I had Anthony Burgess for that class.” I asked how he was. “Great,” he said. “He was drunk, but he was great.”
[2] I have a feeling that Burgess’ terminal diagnosis, however little credence he gave it, spurred his creativity and ignited his career.
Available Now →
www.davidguy.org
It is tempting to look back on a career like that and ask, What is his great, indispensable work? A few months back, in fact, someone did ask a question like that, on Facebook (what is your favorite Burgess novel, aside from A Clockwork Orange? Weirdly for a Burgess fan, I’ve never read that book), and it was tempting to answer with his largest work, Earthly Powers, a huge novel about a Somerset Maugham-esque novelist; I read that book when it came out and enjoyed it immensely. It occurred to me eventually that my favorite work was actually a series, the Enderby novels, about a hapless poet who suffers from severe intestinal distress; there are four in all (though the fourth was a late entry).
But with Burgess, the great thing is the whole life’s work, and unlike other prolific people like Simenon and Wodehouse, the books are not all the same; they’re actually wildly different from one another, even those first five (and a half). A number of his books are experiments in language, as A Clockwork Orange apparently was, and he was an obsessive linguist, obsessed in particular with James Joyce. I read recently that at the end of his life he had been hoping to translate Finnegan’s Wake into Italian, just for the fun of it (not my idea of a good time). But he was just such a Mind, with so many interests (including composing music). It seems petty to separate out one thing and say that is the best.
Burgess was a particular inspiration to me because, when I was 53 and had taken a job at Duke University because we needed for the money, I thought my writing career might be over; I’d always written in a deliberate plodding way (rapid drafts that I worked over endlessly). I had just read the second volume of his autobiography, in which he talked about his strategy during that fateful year: he would compose 1500-2000 words per day, and work them over as much as he wanted that day, but no longer; the next day he would produce that many again. That seemed impossible when I read about it.
Then I thought, what if it’s that or nothing? Also: I’m 53 years old. If I haven’t learned to write a sentence at this point, I might as well quit. Using that method, I was able to compose a shortish book during the course of a summer, and subsequently wrote three novels, followed by a memoir, then another novel. (Only two of the novels have been published, but that’s not my fault.) And now, a year older than Burgess ever got to be, I’m writing about books and movies with the same kind of enthusiasm he brought to it, to his dying day, apparently (he kept asking magazines for assignments). It’s never seemed like work to me. It’s a great way to live.
I reviewed The Pianoplayers for USA Today in 1986, the year it came out. I know that because the little card making the assignment is still paper-clipped to the back book jacket. 500 words, due on October 5th. I loved writing for that paper, because it taught me to shrink reviews to their essence (a talent that I have lost since, obviously). It taught me what book reviewing really was.
There was another harrowing medical trauma in Burgess’ life, though perhaps not in his memory. In 1918, his whole family was infected by the flu epidemic. His mother and sister died (at one point he, at the age of one, was left alone in the house with the two corpses). His father fortunately did not die, but Burgess believed the man had some resentment of the fact that his son had lived, and not the others. Burgess was raised by an aunt for a while, before reuniting with his father once he had remarried. His father worked in a public house owned by the woman he married and played the piano at the place in the evening. Burgess in this novel goes back to that time, but makes piano playing the father’s only means to make money; he also, in the kind of shift that Burgess (and one of his favorite artists, Shakespeare) does rather casually, makes himself a girl.
I suspect that, on the cusp of 70, Burgess wrote this novel in order to reconnect with that period of his life, not just the succession of crummy flats that he lived in, but also the food, which he details endlessly (it’s no wonder that Enderby, and Burgess himself, had intestinal difficulties), and the whole texture of life. Ellen’s father Billy, whose weaknesses are alcohol, bad food, and women, at first plays at silent movies, where he more or less invents the score as he goes along. He gets into various scrapes at work, moving from theater to theater, some far better than others. At one job he teaches his daughter to play, and on one occasion she subs for him (one gets the impression people weren’t there for the music). Eventually, of course, the talkies come along and he’s out of work altogether.
Ellen in the meantime, all alone much of the time and trying to make her way as best she can, supplements their living by taking money for sex, with an older man whose wife has recently died. She understands what’s going on when he asks her back to his flat, but she’s curious, and she and her father could really use the money (she wants her own room in the boarding house, because she’s in her early teens). All this seems mildly unlikely as I write it, but not as I read it; the older man who hangs around the girls’ school isn’t all that unusual a figure, and his approach to Ellen wasn’t threatening. She knew she could handle him. And she wanted that room.
The apotheosis of Billy’s music career comes when an entrepreneur persuades him to take on the task of a marathon concert, 30 straight days with only two two-hour breaks per day. Whether anyone ever did such a thing I have no idea (sounds like a dance marathon), and—spoiler alert—he doesn’t make it, but people come to pay admission especially as things get difficult for him; they like seeing the man suffer. He took the job because he didn’t have another prospect, also because he was hoping to acquire a nest egg so that he and his daughter could travel to America, where he thought he could sell a system he had invented for teaching children the violin (much like the Suzuki method that later became so successful). He doesn’t get there, but the list of songs he resorts to while he is playing is mammoth and hilarious. Eventually he composes his own opera, also other kinds of music; people who were there at the end said his music had become sublime. But he didn’t make thirty days. He didn’t get particularly close.
After that we focus on Ellen’s career, which she mentioned as the novel opened; perhaps because of her early experiences, she becomes a common—actually a rather uncommon—prostitute. At first she works at a house in France that caters to those who want young women, then moves to a place that caters to all kinds of men. She doesn’t go into detail, but seems content with the work.
Eventually she decides that men know nothing about making love to a woman—who needs to be played like a sensitive musical instrument, a piano in particular—and starts a School for Love, along with some other former hookers. She moves back to Great Britain for that, and of course it’s right on the edge of being illegal; it’s more like what we think of nowadays as sexual surrogates. That works out well for her, and for the men as well. By the end of the story she has retired to Provence and is living a life of leisure.
I do wonder what I made of this novel 39 years ago, with the 500 words I had to devote to it. In the larger oeuvre of a man like Burgess, it’s a diversion, something to keep him writing (he could knock this off in a matter of weeks). It’s largely a feast of language, as all of his books are; the plot is secondary (and doesn’t bear terribly hard scrutiny). But the Burgess shelf is full of books like these, deftly written, highly imagined, with just a little corner of experience from his own life. It’s never a mistake to pick up a Burgess novel.
His real name was John Anthony Burgess Wilson. His pen name was a good career move.
[1] Many years later, he made his way to my current home state. Back in the nineties, I taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina for a couple of semesters, and a party around that time I mentioned I was doing that to a guy I’d just met. “I took that class,” he said. “I had Anthony Burgess for that class.” I asked how he was. “Great,” he said. “He was drunk, but he was great.”
[2] I have a feeling that Burgess’ terminal diagnosis, however little credence he gave it, spurred his creativity and ignited his career.
Available Now →
www.davidguy.org
June 13, 2012
They don't shoot piano players, do they?
Burgess's work has two strong-points, in my opinion. First is his clever black humour, often deftly applied through a cheeky twist on the autobiographical genre. The second is his well-chosen (screenplay-like) choice of scenes. In this case, both of these are still present, along with some nice recreations of the tenor of the times - early part of last century in urban U.K. Unfortunately, his choice of narrator, a young female living through the class and gender oppression of the times, doesn't work as well as some of this other twists on this technique - "A Clockwork Orange" or the much better and more tightly plotted "One Hand Clapping". In his defence though, he's not the only vaunted author who's had problems with the gender switch, and he's much too accomplished to have the work panned as the failure of a journeyman.
In conclusion, read it for the black humour.
Burgess's work has two strong-points, in my opinion. First is his clever black humour, often deftly applied through a cheeky twist on the autobiographical genre. The second is his well-chosen (screenplay-like) choice of scenes. In this case, both of these are still present, along with some nice recreations of the tenor of the times - early part of last century in urban U.K. Unfortunately, his choice of narrator, a young female living through the class and gender oppression of the times, doesn't work as well as some of this other twists on this technique - "A Clockwork Orange" or the much better and more tightly plotted "One Hand Clapping". In his defence though, he's not the only vaunted author who's had problems with the gender switch, and he's much too accomplished to have the work panned as the failure of a journeyman.
In conclusion, read it for the black humour.
July 15, 2018
A quick, enjoyable read. An unsuccessful, piano playing father and his only daughter go from silent theaters to boarding houses fighting against talkies, ungrateful audiences and unfaithful women.
You might disagree, and rightfully so, of the female narrator provided by the male author. Equally disagreeable is the preying of older men upon the female narrator. A sexually precocious girl through no fault of her own, as I would argue.
What is interesting is the history of barroom music and other standards from the 20-40's. Lists and lists of songs that I've never heard of that makes my fingers flee to Youtube for a sampling.
Most convincing is that British food is delicious despite what you might otherwise have heard. Burgess will make your belly rumble for fish and chips with HP Sauce and a nice strong cup of tea.
Read it then move on to other Burgess novels like Earthly Powers, The Doctor is Sick and of course A Clockwork Orange.
You might disagree, and rightfully so, of the female narrator provided by the male author. Equally disagreeable is the preying of older men upon the female narrator. A sexually precocious girl through no fault of her own, as I would argue.
What is interesting is the history of barroom music and other standards from the 20-40's. Lists and lists of songs that I've never heard of that makes my fingers flee to Youtube for a sampling.
Most convincing is that British food is delicious despite what you might otherwise have heard. Burgess will make your belly rumble for fish and chips with HP Sauce and a nice strong cup of tea.
Read it then move on to other Burgess novels like Earthly Powers, The Doctor is Sick and of course A Clockwork Orange.
March 24, 2007
The Pianoplayers explores the intriguing idea of a creative impulse which seeks expression through multiple generations of a family. Burgess' writing is saturated with musical references and displays an absolutely dead-on understanding of what it means to be a musician - sans the romanticized fluff that could so easily be attached to such a story. He writes with a dark humor that is somewhat akin to Vonnegut's sensibility, though somewhat subtler.
Pianoplayers trades heavily on gender roles and sexual mores - sometimes nearly to the point of proselytizing - but rather than detracting from the novel, this is used as a unifying theme and an interesting parallel to musical expression.
A great read, and, as much as I love A Clockwork Orange, a more finely-crafted novel than some of Burgess' better known works.
Pianoplayers trades heavily on gender roles and sexual mores - sometimes nearly to the point of proselytizing - but rather than detracting from the novel, this is used as a unifying theme and an interesting parallel to musical expression.
A great read, and, as much as I love A Clockwork Orange, a more finely-crafted novel than some of Burgess' better known works.
February 7, 2015
Burgess is quite hit and miss, of course. Some of my favourite books are by Burgess, but some of my least favourite are too. The titillating cover drew me in. Part of my dissatisfaction might've been thinking there would be far more nunspoloitation and irreverent sex in convents when there was really none at all (the copy is very misleading, likely on purpose). Instead we have hebephilia aplenty, some jabs at the sex lives of Protestants, and a narrative style that just doesn't come off very well. You can see what he's trying to do, but it fails in pretty obvious ways. It was too bad.
May 14, 2023
"The Pianoplayers" by Anthony Burgess is a delightful and beguiling read that I wholeheartedly recommend. Brimming with wit, rhythm, and a deep affection for music, this book is a delightful symphony in its own right. There is no question in my mind that this book deserves a full five-star rating.
At the heart of this novel is the relationship between the narrator, Ellen Henshaw, and her father, Billy, a pianoplayer in silent movie theatres. Burgess explores this relationship with a delicate mix of humor, nostalgia, and emotional depth. The characters are brilliantly crafted, with Ellen's voice being particularly memorable. Her lively, no-nonsense narration is one of the highlights of the book.
Burgess's love for music is palpable in "The Pianoplayers". He delves into the world of early 20th-century popular music with gusto, bringing to life the boisterous atmosphere of the silent movie era. The book is filled with musical references and anecdotes that will delight music lovers.
Beyond its entertaining story and characters, "The Pianoplayers" also offers deeper insights into the nature of art and creativity. Through Billy's struggles and triumphs as a pianoplayer, Burgess examines the tension between artistic integrity and commercial success, the transformative power of music, and the enduring appeal of art in all its forms.
One of the things I appreciate most about "The Pianoplayers" is its warmth and humanity. Despite its occasionally bawdy humor and sharp social commentary, the book is ultimately a celebration of life's simple joys and the enduring bonds of family. It's a book that makes you laugh, but it also makes you feel.
In conclusion, "The Pianoplayers" is a gem of a book that showcases Anthony Burgess at his most playful and poignant. It's a book that resonates with humor, heart, and the sweet strains of music. A well-deserved five-star read.
At the heart of this novel is the relationship between the narrator, Ellen Henshaw, and her father, Billy, a pianoplayer in silent movie theatres. Burgess explores this relationship with a delicate mix of humor, nostalgia, and emotional depth. The characters are brilliantly crafted, with Ellen's voice being particularly memorable. Her lively, no-nonsense narration is one of the highlights of the book.
Burgess's love for music is palpable in "The Pianoplayers". He delves into the world of early 20th-century popular music with gusto, bringing to life the boisterous atmosphere of the silent movie era. The book is filled with musical references and anecdotes that will delight music lovers.
Beyond its entertaining story and characters, "The Pianoplayers" also offers deeper insights into the nature of art and creativity. Through Billy's struggles and triumphs as a pianoplayer, Burgess examines the tension between artistic integrity and commercial success, the transformative power of music, and the enduring appeal of art in all its forms.
One of the things I appreciate most about "The Pianoplayers" is its warmth and humanity. Despite its occasionally bawdy humor and sharp social commentary, the book is ultimately a celebration of life's simple joys and the enduring bonds of family. It's a book that makes you laugh, but it also makes you feel.
In conclusion, "The Pianoplayers" is a gem of a book that showcases Anthony Burgess at his most playful and poignant. It's a book that resonates with humor, heart, and the sweet strains of music. A well-deserved five-star read.
July 29, 2018
This is a book of three parts, although there is a unifying theme. The first is a fictionalized biography of Burgess's own father, a cinema pianoplayer, and this is by far the best of the three parts. Here Burgess captures a bygone age with his erudite and fluent prose. The second, a bit of light whoring, seems almost cursory in comparison. And the last is a long anecdote; it would be hilarious if told to you down the pub, but here it just seems out of place.
Still, this has reminded me of the pleasures of Burgess's work and I shall be re-reading more in the future.
Still, this has reminded me of the pleasures of Burgess's work and I shall be re-reading more in the future.
October 1, 2019
I finished this while waiting for my class to start only to find that it was canceled. I've always wanted to read more from Anthony Burgess so I finally did it. AND it was okay. I guess I'm disappointed with the novel. It's not bad by any means but I didn't connect to any of the characters. I enjoyed the relationship dynamic between the father and daughter but not much else. The writing can be witty and funny at times but more often than not it's sort of just meandering. I think I'll still continue to explore his works but it's not a top priority for me anymore.
April 17, 2025
A far cry from A Clockwork Orange, the only other Burgess I've read. I enjoyed reading this, he tells a good story. But it seems that a lot of the main character's story to becoming a madam was left untold. I'm not sure why he set this in a frame. I kept forgetting she was telling her story to a young man to retell until she made a comment to him directly in the narrative. There were a lot of lists, too - mostly songs I've never heard of - I did a lot of skipping there. The story also bogged down at times, but not enough to make me stop reading. Overall a decent read.
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May 27, 2021Interested in learning to play piano? Good idea. No matter what genre you are into, the piano can help you enjoy, understand and create great music. For a couple of hundred years now, piano music has played an essential role in the development of Western music. Most of the great classical composers as well as many modern popular artists have given this amazing instrument a place of honour in their creative work
November 21, 2020
Probably biased, but this was my jam. A little slow and awkward at times, but makes up for it in many other ways.
One peeve is, authors who insert multiple pages of nothing else but names, titles, ages, or any other exercise in word over substance. Nobody likes the Old Testament, nobody likes reading 3 pages of pre-1940's song titles.
One peeve is, authors who insert multiple pages of nothing else but names, titles, ages, or any other exercise in word over substance. Nobody likes the Old Testament, nobody likes reading 3 pages of pre-1940's song titles.
August 5, 2022
For some reason, I didn’t “believe” the narrator. Not in the sense that I thought she was telling lies. I think it was more in the tone Anthony Burgess shaped to bring her to life. A bitter lady, arrogant, witty but in a wrong way… Something in the storytelling felt forced and fake. I loved Kingdom of the Wicked and Clockwork Orange, but this fell flat for me.
July 5, 2020
It was funny and I learned something about playing piano in a silent film theatre and 20s/30s England. The idea of an old man writer trying to describe a young woman (initially still a child) coming to terms with her sexuality is a bit unsettling though.
March 4, 2021
Witty and dark account of a 'marginalized' (or revolutionary?) young woman in early 20th century UK. The last chapter provided a surprising break in the narrative, which was going on cheerily in a ragtime manner, but was absurdly funny indeed. A quick and jolly read, all in all.
December 5, 2017
From low tragedy to high farce, via Manchester's silent cinemas, end-of-the-pier Blackpool and a very unlikely road trip through Italy. A joyful adventure with an unashamedly nostalgic soundtrack.
June 29, 2018
I may be Burgessed-out, some fun bits but really leaves no impact
December 29, 2019
Well written but slightly disturbing in places, but funny in others. 3 stories all interlinked about a family's joy of learning to play and playing the piano
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June 27, 2020Nice twist. Kept me reading on.
May 30, 2021
Quirky and different. I enjoyed it.
June 29, 2024
This story shouldn't be taken too seriously. It's wild and funny—enjoy it.
January 11, 2025
A wonderfully written book on the subjects of love and sex. Burgess is a master of telling stories through controversial main characters and in this book he nailed it.
October 4, 2025
Musste manchmal lachen, aber ansonsten einfach zum kotzen
October 10, 2016
Dictated to an aspiring writer, Ellen Henshaw's life story, and that of her often down-and-out yet brilliant piano-playing father, is told in a fascinating ribald style. From her impoverished youth to eventual rise as a high-priced escort, the story also tells of how her father supported them by cranking out unappreciated keyboard accompaniment to silent films, and later, at various other gigs. Their travels and travails are uniquely told.
July 21, 2009
I have always thought Burgess was best when he was writing about music and this novel, which tracks music through a family is filled with the grace notes of analysis and insight that I love zooming in on when reading Burgess.
February 29, 2020
I've recently re-read this and had to update the star rating to a lower one, mostly because while being a very short novel, it felt like a three-part epic that could have been fleshed out more. I love the style of writing but just needed more.
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