I ordinarily love William Boyd's novels and count Any Human Heart among my favourites, but unfortunately just couldn't get into Love is Blind. I will try again in the future, though, because I know this author is something special.

This was not my favourite of Boyd's novels but his writing is skilled and he creates strong characters.

I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

A novel by William Boyd never disappoints.
Writing is perfect, storyline gripping, what more can anyone want?
I will always recommend William Boyd to anyone as he is not only a literary writer but a readable one....something not always found in one place. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this for an honest review.

A beautifully written novel as you would expect from William Boyd. Not one of his most gripping but it doesn't have to be lots of action for his books to be captivating and a pleasure to read.

William Boyd is to me a great writer. Everything his pen turns to is worth reading. This book is no exception. The story follows Brodie Moncur as his life starts on its dramatic way. He leaves Edinburgh and his oppressive and unpleasant father for the excitement of Paris where he falls in love. His love, this passion, is overwhelming and he follows his opera singing Russian to St Petersburg. High passion, great pain - Boyd weaves a wonderful and all consuming tale. A tour de force if I may.

Mr Boyd has written a well structured and character driven novel. His sense of time and place is excellently portrayed through sound research and a wonderful writing style. He not only depicts the period of the setting through the minutiae of Brodie's life but also through the wider issues prevalent at the time.

Geographically, the book is wide ranging and the reader is able to accompany Brodie on his travels. Along the way, we are introduced to a plethora of characters but this never felt confusing. I have read books in the past, written by lesser authors and have found this same scenario difficult to follow. However, with this book I always felt firm in the knowledge of where we were and who we were meeting and the author handles this with skill.

I felt completely immersed in Brodie's world and could not wait to get back to reading it each day. It is a story of music, love, obsession and the chaos which these can create. This is a memorable book which I would encourage you to read for yourself.

I've had this ARC on my conscience for far too long. Loved Any Human Heart, Blue Afternoon and Restless. This one didn't grab me in the same way.
Brodie is a talented Scot who is promoted to run the Paris office of a piano shop in the 1890s. He falls in love, is diagnosed with TB, and is embroiled in complex office politics. Boyd writes so well; here I never felt the same compulsion to find out what was going to happen, or even care about the characters.
Think I'm missing something?!

My first William Boyd and on the strength of this I'm going to work my way through his back catalogue. What a lovely book.

This was perhaps a little slow to get me hooked but by the end this seemingly simple tale of a man in love turned out to be so much more. Transporting you to a different time and so many different places to bring them to life and leaving it right to the end to know ... did she love him too?

Brodie Moncur is a piano tuner working in Edinburgh who is given a fantastic opportunity to work in Paris. He arrives in Paris and through his work meets and falls in love with Lika Blum, an opera singer. This relationship has to develop in secret and the story is wrapped around this. I found it overly long and very detailed. I enjoyed the story but I struggled to retain interest all the way through. Thank you to Net galley and the publisher, Viking for an ARC.

Stories can transport us to different worlds. But in Love is Blind, we are transported around the world. Edinburgh, Paris, Biarritz, Russia, Andaman Islands. Each described so evocatively that you feel you are there. Boyd writes with such depth and gives us, the reader, an insight that all is not as it seems which the protagonist appears not to be aware of. We are rooting for him, this deeply caring, sensitive man.

There is suspense, and there are heart racing moments. There is pain, and joy. Love and hate. Tragedy and triumphs. Mostly, Boyd reminds us that to be human is to be flawed. To be human is to love:

'Love was indeed a kind of madness, he realised, it defied all logic...the intensity of the feeling you experienced was the only vindication necessary'.

Absolutely got lost in this wonderful book and I can't recommend it enough.

The first book I've read by this author and I could tell straight away that he's a great story teller Brodie Moncur's life span across many countries as he works with some great pianists as a piano tuner he is not a well man and encounters lots of problems with some quite unsavoury characters along the way he thinks he has found his true love with Lika but it's not to be a very emotional ending to a very good story well worth reading

Adolescent obsession... 2 stars

Brodie Moncur works for an Edinburgh piano manufacturer, Channon, at the turn of the 19th century. He started out as a piano tuner but now helps out with the general running of the saleroom, so when the new Paris branch is struggling the owner asks him to go over and see what he can do. Brodie has long been at odds with his father, a bullying hellfire preacher, and has no real ties in Scotland, so happily agrees. Once there, he falls in love with Lika Blum, the girlfriend of an Irish pianist. Then he stays in love with her for the rest of the book, has sex with her quite a lot, and fantasises about having sex with her most of the rest of the time. He has sex with her in Paris, the South of France, Scotland and St Petersburg. And maybe other places – I forget.

Oh dear! I remember jokingly making a note to myself in a previous review that I must stop reading books written by major male authors once they reach the age of 60, since hormonally they appear to revert to a kind of adolescent obsession with sex. William Boyd is 66 now, and let’s face it, he was reasonably obsessed even in his prime. It’s not that the sex is graphic, nor even particularly erotic. It’s just that it’s not nearly as interesting as a subject to this reader as it appears to be to the writer. Sex as a literary side-dish, fine, but it makes for an unsatisfying main course.

There’s so much potential in the story too, but very little of it is realised. None of the locations come to life, and the bits I’d have liked to know more about – his relationship with his father and family, for example, or what life was like in St Petersburg around the time of the Revolution – seem to be introduced and then sidelined and forgotten about. Brodie’s passion for Lika doesn’t burn up the pages, probably because she hasn’t got much personality – his desire for her is purely physical, although he calls it love. The stuff about the piano tuning is actually the best bit of the book, although even here one can tell Boyd has researched it to the nth degree and is determined to name every part.

There is a plot of sorts, around musical plagiarism and the rivalry of Brodie and the Irish pianist for the love of the fair Lika. But when I tell you that, as it reached its climax, the three words I wrote in my notes are “ludicrous”, “laughable” and “dire”, you’ll be able to tell I wasn’t wholly impressed by it.

I am a long-time fan of William Boyd and when he’s on form he’s one of the all-time best storytellers out there. Unfortunately, sometimes his form seems to desert him, and for me this is one of those times. If you’re new to Boyd, don’t be put off him by this review. Read Brazzaville Beach instead – there’s sex in it too, but there’s also a good story...

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Viking.

I loved the settings for this book - Paris, St Petersburg, the South of France. The author used the ever present threat of the jealous Kilbarron brothers, and the health problems suffered by Brodie, to shift locations regularly.
The threat was real and Boyd kept the tension building right to the end. The irony is that when Brodie did attempt to fight back, it was his inner being - his lungs - that held restrained him. The constant shifting of places and the continual introduction of new characters could be confusing but each had its place.
Throughout the novel the question about Lika's love remained unanswered - until the final chapter. Did she love him? Would she be loyal? And if so, to her husband, or to Brodie?

Love is Blind is a beautiful and lyrical story about Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish piano tuner in the late 19th Century. His travels take him across Europe and Russia to the distant Andaman islands. It is a tale of passion, revenge and true love. Absorbing and poetic, this is a novel of epic storytelling.

William Boyd’s writing is always a delight and this new novel about Brodie Moncur and his travels through Europe as piano tuner to the finctional John Kilbarron, is a wonderful read. Starting in Edinburgh and moving through, Paris, Biarritz, St Petersburg, Nice and to the Andaman Islands, Brodie is a man who has survived his bible-thumping father to fall in love with Lika Blum, who is herself entangled amorously and professionally with the the Kilbarron brothers. This is not a romance but a novel which incorporates rich elements of European literature (doomed love affairs, nefarious characters and even a dual).

Oh dear. I'm so glad I read Any Human Heart before I read this. If it had been the other way round, I would never have read Any Human Heart - and it's one of my favourite novels.
So this is to say that I'm an admirer of Boyd, so I was willing to go where this book wanted to take me. However, I think this is a novella that's been padded to way beyond its natural length. The time and place are well evoked but much of the action is repetitive until the duel near the end. But that can't make up for the thinly drawn relationships. I wanted to share Brodie's infatuation with Lika, but I never did because she seemed so wooden - and so I didn't believe it. This led me to suspect the author didn't believe it much either. I'm sure there must be something I've missed and I'm waiting for someone to tell me - but the book simply didn't hold my attention the way Any Human Heart did.

Another excellent read from William Boyd. Brodie Moncur an aspiring musician and piano tuner is in favour in high places and gets embroiled in a relationship with a Russian femme fatale and her controlling pianist lover. Paris and St Petersburg at the turn of the 19th/20th century, are the settings for this novel another success in the Boyd camp!

Thanks to Netgalley the author and publishers for a copy of this book.

I've read other books by William Boyd and enjoyed them so I was looking forward to this latest offering. It follows the life of an experienced piano tuner called Brodie Moncur at the start of the twentieth century. From his childhood in a vicarage in the Scottish Borders to Edinburgh, Paris and on to St Petersburg we follow the love story between him and Lika a glamorous Russian opera singer.
At first I found that the story dragged along a bit and was fearful that I wasn't going to get into the book. I persevered though, and was rewarded with a cracking tale of love rivalry between our protagonist and the charismatic pianist that he works for, traveling along with him to keep the pianos in tune.
Well worth a read, give it time to develop and you won't be disappointed with this book.