'Fiennes has exceptional gifts, and he has written a small masterpiece, a tribute to the power of place, family and memory' - "Sunday Telegraph". William Fiennes' childhood was one of imagination and curiosity, bounded only by the horizon he saw from the roof-tiles of his ancient family home. His older brother Richard, known for his towering presence, his inventiveness, his great passion for Leeds United, and his suffering due to severe epilepsy, was an adored and charismatic figure in his life. Years later, eager to understand his brother's mind as fully as the ancient trees and secret haunts of his own journey towards adulthood, William Fiennes has written a profoundly moving account of his home, his family's care, and above all, of Richard. "The Music Room" is a luminous testament to the miracle of consciousness and to the permanence of love. 'On putting the book down I felt as if I had been hypnotised. It held me entranced, afraid and awed. All human grief and glory shimmers off the page' - Libby Purves, "The Times".
'Fiennes has exceptional gifts, and he has written a small masterpiece, a tribute to the power of place, family and memory' - "Sunday Telegraph". William Fiennes' childhood was one of imagination and curiosity, bounded only by the horizon he saw from the roof-tiles of his ancient family home. His older brother Richard, known for his towering presence, his inventiveness, his great passion for Leeds United, and his suffering due to severe epilepsy, was an adored and charismatic figure in his life. Years later, eager to understand his brother's mind as fully as the ancient trees and secret haunts of his own journey towards adulthood, William Fiennes has written a profoundly moving account of his home, his family's care, and above all, of Richard. "The Music Room" is a luminous testament to the miracle of consciousness and to the permanence of love. 'On putting the book down I felt as if I had been hypnotised. It held me entranced, afraid and awed. All human grief and glory shimmers off the page' - Libby Purves, "The Times".
William Fiennes is the best-selling author of The Snow Geese, winner of the 2003 Hawthornden Prize, Somerset Maugham Award and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2002. He is also a founder member of the charity First Story, set up to place published authors in creative writing residencies in state schools across the UK.
William Fiennes is the author of the widely-acclaimed The Snow Geese which was shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. He runs a charity called First Story, and lives and works in London.
The Music Room has an elegiac feel, not least -because Mr. Fiennes
writes about his family with such care and dignity. His
descriptions of Richard's -outbursts and seizures have the
brutality of truth -without any of the modern memoirist's tendency
to sensationalize. We are brought deep into the castle that was a
family's home, yet what we learn still has an air about it of
privacy and restraint. -- Meghan Cox Gurdon
It is a beautiful and fortifying book, even a great one. --
Nicholas Shakespeare
This is no misery memoir...on the contrary, it is a thoughtful and
lyrical account of an extraordinary childhood. -- John Burnside
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