Love is Blind is a magnificent travelogue. I feel that I have been transported back in time to turn of the century Edinburgh, Paris, St Petersburg, the South of France, Trieste and the Andaman Islands. William Boyd describes the periods and the places beautifully. The protagonists are equally well drawn you have a Scottish piano tuner, a Russian opera singer, an Irish piano player and a wealthy American anthropologist. I missed tube stops and stayed up far too late lost in Love is Blind. I loved it right up until the final full stop, but then I had a lot of questions, there are some magnificent set pieces and characters introduced that just fade away, never to be useful again. Would I recommend Love Is Blind? Yes but beware that not all your questions will be answered.

When Brodie is offered a job in Paris, he seizes the chance to flee Edinburgh and his tyrannical clergyman father. In Paris, a fateful encounter with a famous pianist irrevocably changes his future - and sparks an obsessive love affair with a beautiful Russian soprano, Lika Blum. Moving from Paris to St Petersburg to Edinburgh and back again, Brodie's love for Lika and its dangerous consequences pursue him around Europe and beyond, during an era of overwhelming change as the nineteenth century becomes the twentieth. 

This is a very enjoyable read from Boyd. Once again, I was swept away into the story of Brodie, in this book we travel far and wide and reading this was pure escapism. I loved getting to know Brodie and following him on his adventures, it made for enthralling reading. I fell in love with him as a character and it was highly entertaining to follow his life's tribulations. Lika is a trickier character, we do not know or get to understand her as much as Brodie, she comes across colder and harder to like. This is of course explained by her backstory and everything does come together to make sense. Stick with the character of Lika and Boyd brings the plot back together well.

'Love Is Blind' has the trademark style of being a book by Boyd. The descriptions are exquisite and really assist the reader in envisaging the places and people we come across. I could strongly imagine the places Brodie went to and this was due to Boyd's stunning depictions.

As the plot progresses, Boyd throws in a very human, emotive storyline for Brodie, which I will not spoil, but suffice to say, it adds a whole new layer of emotion and feeling to the book. Strongly liking the character of Brodie really helped me enjoy the plot and I just adored reading about Brodie. 

'Love Is Blind' is another stunning depiction of human life and love. Brodie has such a strong, emotive story to tell and I loved following him and Lika through their life and their love. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for an advance copy.

This book was a fairly slow start but so beautifully written it soon got me hooked. It tells the story of Brodie and how he falls into his career as a piano tuner which leads to him meeting the love of his life. But this love can never really be open. You need to read this - a really lovely book. Thanks to NetGalley for my free copy.

Beautifully written story of a love-stricken piano tuner who has escaped a cruel and domineering father to find himself ruled by other people and circumstances. It is funny and sharp and has plenty of adventure throughout Europe, passion and pace. A really good read.

A return to magnificent form for William Boyd in this expansive, intricate and enthralling novel. Lovers of "Any Human Heart" will enjoy this.

Son of a firebrand preacher, Brodie Moncur has managed to escape the manse unlike his sibling. A talented piano tuner, he works for a manufacturer in Edinburgh and when the opportunity comes to move to Paris Brodie jumps at it. One of his ideas to promote Channon pianos is to sponsor a leading pianist and this brings Brodie into the circle of a wild Irishman. Falling in love with the mistress of the impresario Brodie travels to St Petersburg and back to France with love and tragedy dogging his footsteps.
I have long been a fan of Boyd's writing and it is wonderful to see how his narratives have progressed over the past 30 years. Here the excesses of life are tempered by the heartfelt feelings Brodie has for Like and the doomed nature of their relationship. Doomed because of her past and his health yet all handled with such sensitivity that it seems a natural progression of the story. This is an outstanding writer producing yet another outstanding novel and sometimes I feel that Boyd isn't given the credit due for his works.

I find William Boyd an uneven writer at the best of times – and this perhaps isn’t the best of times. There’s a lot to find fault with in this his latest novel, (2018) but nevertheless, and almost in spite of myself, I really quite enjoyed it. “A rattling good yarn” is the cliché that springs to mind and which sits well with all the other clichés in the book. This is hardly high literary fiction. The storyline is frankly ridiculous at times. The characters have little depth or development. The sex scenes are frankly embarrassing. And you’ll learn more about piano mechanisms and piano tuning that you will ever need to draw on in the most esoteric of conversations. However, if you can suspend your critical faculties for a while, fall into this sweeping romantic saga and go along for the ride, crossing continents and encountering a whole host of unlikely people en route, it really is quite an entertaining read and it retained my interest until the end.

Love Is Blind opens with a letter from a woman to her sister anticipating the arrival of a male assistant. The story then jumps back some 15 years to linearly tell the story of the events that led Brodie Moncur, a young Scotsman, to the remote Andaman islands to be an American ethnologist’s assistant.

Brodie is a piano tuner, a profession that will always ensure his employment. His story starts in Channon’s Edinburgh piano shop but two life-changing events soon ensue: as a result of his innovative approach to attracting business he is sent to restore the fortunes of the inexplicably ailing Paris branch of the business, run incompetently or possibly fraudulently by Channon Sr’s son, and he suffers a lung haemorrhage which turns out to be caused by tuberculosis. This is the eve of the 20th century when proper care means there is hope of a decent longevity post-diagnosis, and Brodie is accordingly not disheartened. Trying to turn the Paris business around, Brodie enlists virtuoso but slightly-past-his-best pianist John Kilmarron to play a Channon piano on stage, and makes himself available for fine-tuning it and calibrating it to Kilmarron’s particular needs. It is thus that he first encounters the love in question - Lika Blum, a Russian singer romantically and professionally attached to Kilmarron and his sinister brother and manager Malachi. A slow-burn secret affair ensues, which takes Brodie, in thrall to Lika and through her the Kilmarrons, to St Petersburg, Nice, Switzerland, and back to Paris before the far-flung Andaman islands. Eventual discovery is inevitable , and it draws the obsessive wrath of John and especially Malachi down on Brodie.

If that description sounds rather bland, it is because that is how the book felt to me. In spite of a secret affair, subterfuge, discovery, a duel, a plagiarism dispute, international settings, a preternatural ability on the part of Malachi to track Brodie down wherever he hides and however carefully he hides his tracks, and the not entirely surprising revelation that Lika is not all she appears to be - the narrative never rises above the pedestrian. It is told in the third person but very much through Brodie’s sensibility, and he remains something of a cypher throughout. There is a reticence and a lack of emotion about him which feels like emptiness rather than hidden depth. He is a man who fancies he is in control of his life choices, but is actually drifting much of the time, in thrall to a rather ordinary woman adept at manipulating men. This is obviously meant to be a tale of a grand sweeping passion, but it failed to carry me with it.

Unlike with the last two or three Boyd novels I found it quite hard to get into the story, and the lack of engagement persisted to the end. Brodie just isn’t a very interesting character and his life story is not especially extraordinary. He must have been enterprising to be trusted by his employer at a relatively young age, he must have been attractive to Lika as her affection for him seems genuine enough, and their love must have been passionate... but this just does not come through in the writing. It is quite odd that an author as accomplished as Boyd should have written such a flat tale, though better reviewers than me beg to differ.

This story of Brodie Moncur, son of a minister from the Scottish Borders takes us to Paris, Russia and a few other cities. Brodie is a musician but finds he has an exceptional talent as a piano tuner. Desperate to escape his harsh, thoroughly unpleasant father, he takes the chance to go to Paris to turn around the fortunes of a piano seller. He is not entirely welcome there but finds some success. He also falls in love, but the path doesn't run smoothly. He ends up involved in a duel, which panics him completely! This is an entertaining tale.

William Boyd tells a wonderful story which I found hard to put down. Crossing continents, this love story of a scottish piano tuner and an opera singer, is gripping and a heartrending. A classic of its type, with wonderful characters and a clever plot. . There are duels, dysfunctional families, jealous lovers and sibling rivalry.. all set around the romantic , b ut high pressured world of professional classic music. Wonderful stuff.

I absolutely loved this book! I have been a big fan of William Boyd’s writing for years so was delighted to read Love is Blind. From the very first page, I was engrossed in the story of Brodie Moncur. I was captivated by the Scottish location at the beginning, the realistic dialogue, his troubled family and his evil, drunken father. The world of piano tuning interested me and was very well researched. The narrative drew me in and I cared for the characters, especially Brodie and the predicaments he found himself in. I enjoyed the different settings, all beautifully described. I really wanted there to be a happy ending and for Brodie to be reunited with Lika. I was enjoying the book so much that I decided to go to the beach for the morning and read it uninterrupted. Definitely a five star read for me, and now I want to re-read other William Boyd novels. He is a superb writer, one of my favourites.

Boyd envelops you in this books world

You are immediately transported into late 19th / early 20th century Edinburgh, Paris and St Petersburg and beyond. With engaging characters, a tempestuous love triangle and piano tuning, what more could you ask for.

William Boyd is a master at creating compelling page turners, this is up there with his best.

Many of the reviews of this book follow the story-line so will give that a miss and explain how I felt as I was reading the novel.

William Boyd is one of my favourite writers, and I greatly admire his ability to create a real sense of a person and the times they live in. He is one of the few male writers who manages to create a decent female voice.

Given all that was hugely looking forward to reading this but was somewhat disappointed. Partly I think because Lika came across as such a cipher, or perhaps that was the point of her. Any which way I found it very difficult to believe why Brodie was so obsessed with her. For me, that made it difficult to engage with the novel.

Loved the descriptions, the different venues. What sometimes was missing was a sense of context. Particularly for the Russian section. Then again, if you are reading a William Boyd novel you very likely are able to complete what comes next for yourself.

I love a book that spans a life and there were times that I was completely caught up in the novel and times when I was thinking ho hum, I think I am in danger of being bored.

I think that was my issue. It is a patchy novel. Maybe he became a little bored himself, maybe he is too important a writer for an editor to say 'you need to cut this'.

If you like William Boyd read it. If this is going to be your first William Boyd start somewhere else. Maybe with Restless or any Human Heart.

Great characters and an interesting period at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century. The love story at the centre of the story is echoed in the lives of all the characters and the book deals with family difficulties and the difficulties of love that although reciprocated is doomed and dangerous for both characters. The setting of the book in Edinburgh and then the many places that Brodie travels to makes the history of the different cultures interesting as he struggles to adapt to new surroundings and his own identity.

When a new novel by William Boyd features a male protagonist, my first thought ‘is it another Logan Mountstuart’ with a feeling of anticipation. But ‘Love is Blind’ is not another version of ‘Any Human Hear’t. It tells the story of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish piano tuner who travels Europe as he seeks warmer climes and the love of his life.
Boyd is on good form and I raced through ‘Love is Blind’, enveloped in Brodie’s end of 19th century/early 20th century story. Told almost exclusively from Brodie’s viewpoint, plus some of the letters he writes and receives, we see the world and the people he meets through his eyes so, as he falls in with thieves the sense of impending doom increases. He is a likeable, believeable character, son of a fire-and-brimstone alcoholic preacher, living in a time of great change as motor cars appear on the road and the signs of war increase but when consumption kills. The details of Brodie’s piano tuning are fascinating, these skills are the passport to his travels, getting him into and out of trouble, enabling him to earn money wherever he finds himself.
When the story starts in 1894 Brodie is a piano tuner for Channon & Co in Edinburgh. Offered a job at the Channon shop in Paris, he takes the opportunity to escape his oppressive father and so falls in with John Kilbarron, a fading Irish concert pianist who comes to rely on Brodie’s magical skills with his tuning tools. The major difficulties of Brodie’s story are established in Paris. He falls in love with Lika Blum, would-be Russian opera singer, who may or may not be in a relationship with Kilbarron. And he starts to cough up blood.
Consumption is diagnosed and Brodie travels to Nice in search of a warmer climate, unable to work, leaving Lika behind. From the beginning, Brodie pursues Lika rather than the other way round, she insists on secrecy and is enigmatic when pressed for details of her earlier life. Warning signs that are obvious to the reader but to which Brodie is blind, the blindness of the title, are everywhere. Lika does not share many secrets and there is no authorial voice to fill in her backstory. He is a young man in love/lust and cannot see what seems to be staring him in the face. He writes a succession of letters which, given the need for secrecy, are foolhardy. So when trouble finds him, in the shape of Kilbarron’s thuggish brother Malachi, it is not a surprise.
The character of Lika is lightly drawn but that is perhaps because Brodie knows so little about her. They arrange assignations in hotel rooms and on riverbanks, passing notes to each other and sharing significant glances. The affair continues as the Kilbarron party moves to St Petersburg, Russia, to perform a programme for a new wealthy benefactor. It is here that the cracks start to appear in the Kilbarron/Moncur relationship.
The final part of the book was less satisfactory for me. The Prologue to the story is a short letter written in 1906 by a woman called Page from an address in the Andaman Islands, Indian Empire, in which Brodie Moncur is briefly mentioned. In Part VII, Brodie is living at Deemer’s Hotel, Port Blair, the Andamans. I found his encounter with ethnologist Page Arbogast and their research trip to the Nicobar Islands superfluous.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

This slightly rambling historical novel was very enjoyable. It ranges in setting from rural Scotland to fin de siecle Paris and St Petersburg. In this is bears a similarity to Any Human Heart by the author.

For me it was a cross between Rose Tremain's Merivel and Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Like the protagonist in the latter you are unconvinced that the love interest is "worthy" of his love /obsession. In this case the beautiful Lika is "slippery" and enigmatic. You do believe the title that love is blind. Even Lika tries to get Brodie to understand the "blindness " of his love.

More overtly Brodie the protagonist is "blind". He wears a prototype of some sort of varifocal spectacles and his job as a musical tuner requires fine hearing rather than sight.

The best parts for me were the parts set in Brodie's birthplace and his relationship with his fire and brimstone preacher father- shades of Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner ? There are some great scenes set in this house and "kirk" He then "replaces" his alcoholic father with another "father figure", the musician John Kilbarron and his "evil" brother Malachi.

Brodie initially meets them with a seemingly mutually beneficial business idea of Kilbarron "promoting" Brodie's employer's pianos. However this is a relationship that soon turns sour especially when Brodie falls in love.

Brodie's fatal "flaws" include his love for Lika and his physical illness -tuberculosis. I am glad that Boyd doesn't let modern research about the dangers of smoking intrude into the historical setting. As a modern reader you think why does a man with tuberculosis smoke so much.?

This was a great holiday read for me. The narrative had a fast pace and I really enjoyed the story telling but I doubt if this a book I will return to.

Set in late 1890’s/early 20 th century, this novel is reasonably engaging. The author paints very vivid pictures of the locations used and I enjoyed the plot. However, I thought it overlong and a bit too bogged down in irrelevant detail. There is an inordinate amount of time describing the characters smoking. Why do we need to know every time they light up?
It began to feel repetitive as Brodie moves from place to place to escape his nemesis.
The main characters didn’t really grab me either.
Boyd is without doubt a good writer but the book was a bit of a disappointment for me and the ending seemed rushed after such a slow build up.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this copy.

As usual, William Boyd does not disappoint. The characters are well drawn and convincing and the places we are taken are vividly described. This is on a par with ‘Any Human Heart’ and we get to know and love Brodie Moncur our narrator. Boyd seamlessly brushstrokes the key elements that make up Edinburgh, Paris and parts of Russia at the end of the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth centuries. This is a book I have no hesitation in recommending to lovers of Boyd’s previous books or those who are lucky enough to have just discovered him.

I was completely absorbed by this masterful novel by William Boyd. Excellent characterisation and atmospheric in its descriptions of cities and situations. Maybe a little too much musical technicalities for a layman but it nevertheless didl not spoil the story too much. It was mysterious and romantic but there were always doubts andf questions running through the book. Highly recommended and thanks to Net Galley for giving me the opportunity of reviewing it.

Love is Blind is the story of Brodie Moncur, son of a violent and alcoholic clergymen, eldest sibling of a brood of children and talented piano tuner. When the opportunity to live and work in Paris arises he grabs it with both hands, leaving the dark gloom of Peebles and Edinburgh behind. It is here that he meets Lika, she is the girlfriend of John Kilbarron, a famous pianist who employs Brodie to be his own personal piano tuner and he and Lika are instantly attracted to one another. The book travels through France, to Russia and much further afield, taking the reader on a tour of the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century.

I love William Boyd's writing and Any Human Heart is one of my most favourite books, but I really struggled with Love Is Blind. I am going to hold my hands up and say that my reading of it was a little disjointed, I had a migraine for five days and couldn't read a thing and then I had some books I had to read for Blog Tour commitments so I dipped in and out of it and this may have had an impact on my overall impression of the book. Saying that though, for those five days where I wasn't reading I didn't miss the book at all although I desperately missed reading.

I think I struggled because I didn't really like Brodie or Lika and I am still unsure what I thought of Brodie as a character. I suppose that he was presented as a fully rounded man who is neither good nor bad and who is capable of both great and awful things but I really struggled to connect with him. In a book where all of the action takes place around one man it makes it difficult to empathise or feel fear or pity at key times in the story. Saying that though, the plot is wonderful and the storytelling is brilliant. It is intricate and clever and I was carried away by the engrossing tale of love and revenge, so much so that I read the second half of the book in one-sitting.

I love a book that spans generations and timelines and for the most part this book scratched that itch. I would have liked to have known more about the places he was living though, the social and political backgrounds would have added more depth perhaps. He spends a lot of time in Russia and mixes in very exalted circles but I couldn't get a feel for the political situation there and my rudimentary knowledge of Russian history tells me it was an interesting time period. I suppose I felt that despite his moving around Europe, I couldn't get a feel for where he was. It was only the descriptions of the food he was eating that provided any depth - and what descriptions they were, completely mouth-watering at times!

William Boyd really excels at wonderful dialogue, conversations between characters never feel jarring and he uses letters from Brodie to his family back home to keep the action moving well. However, at times things felt plodding and some characters appeared who seemed to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. The intricate dance between Brodie and the Kilbarron brothers, John and Malachi, is filled with tension and these unnecessary characters  seemed to take away from rather than add to the what will happen next element. My favourite part of the book was this relationship between these three men and there are moments of brilliance and power that kept me turning the pages.

Despite my difficulties with the book I still think that William Boyd is an astonishing writer and overall I did like Love Is Blind (I have given it 3 stars) but I will say one thing -- there seems to be an obsession with breasts. So many boobs. I was sick of reading about them. Under dressing gowns, pressed flat beneath a blouse, in the bedroom of a brothel - it felt wholly unnecessary and a little juvenile at times to be honest. This is a book about how overpowering love can be and how it can make you do reckless things and whilst I understood Brodie's visceral and primal reaction to Lika it felt incredibly incongruous on occasion. I am not a prude in the slightest and have absolutely no issues with sex scenes in books, but the constant references and observations felt grubby and made me feel more than a little uncomfortable.