The Piano Tuner - Chiang-Sheng Kuo - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Chiang-Sheng Kuo
TRANSLATORS: Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin
GENRE: Literary Ficton.
RATING: 3.5 Stars.

In a Nutshell: Good in bits and pieces, but as a whole, it didn’t work much for me. The writing is a treat to the senses, but the nonlinear flow and abstract hops across people and timeframes made this a tricky read.

Story Synopsis:
Lin San is an old widower mourning the death of his young wife Emily. In a subconscious quest towards healing the present grief and past hurts, he ends getting close to the narrator of this story, the piano tuner who remains unnamed for most of the story. However, the piano tuner has secrets of his own, and through his thoughts, we discover a story of broken dreams and shattered hopes, and the impact these have on their harbourers.
The story is written in a random mix of first person (the piano tuner) and third person (Lin San and a couple of other characters.)


While the story begins with a focus on Lin San, we realise as it progresses that the main character is, as the title suggests, the piano tuner. He begins as a simple character, but soon his thoughts show how much he hides beneath that ordinary exterior. Getting to understand his persona under the façade is the main crux of the story.

 
We see the other characters only through the piano tuner’s words and memories. As such, they are revealed to us only in fleeting glances, except for Lin San who gets a greater presence in the story by virtue of having the only direct interaction with the tuner in the present time. Yet, all the characters are complicated to understand.

 
Adding to the trouble is the random switch between first person and third person, sometimes within a few paragraphs without any indication of the jump. It is a task to keep track of the dominant narrative voice when the hops across characters are abrupt. (I am not too sure if this was a formatting problem in my digital ARC, or a problem with the translation, or maybe both.) The unveiling of the events is not chronological, which is the icing on the cake of confusion.

 
All is not lost, though. There are enough of positives also in this novella. The writing is lyrical, with thought-provoking quotes scattered generously throughout the book. I adored all the bits connected to the piano, right from their manufacturing to the role of piano tuners, to the anecdotes about classical composers, to even the parallels between tuning an instrument and narrating a story. While a certain amount of familiarity will help you appreciate these specific elements better, it is not mandatory as the writing is fluid enough to adapt to your level of understanding.

 
The ending is quite abrupt, and that was the deal-breaker for me. Until then, I was still okay with giving this emotional story a 3.5, and rounding it up. But I was left wanting a lot more with that brusque finish, and hence my rating gets rounded downwards.

 
This is my first novel by a Taiwanese writer, so I am not sure if the book depicts the writing style of the author or the country. Either way, this was a good book in many ways, but not the right book for me. It was supposedly a huge hit in Taiwan and a winner of every major literary award there, so this might reveal to us the preferred style in Taiwanese literature.

 
All in all, this is a poignant story with many merits. But I am left feeling like a novice gazing at an abstract painting and trying to figure out what it means beyond the colours and shapes on the surface. What I could see looked good to my eyes, but my brain was mostly befuddled at trying to piece together the distinct elements of the work into a cohesive whole.

 
My thanks to Simon & Schuster, Arcade, and Edelweiss+ for the DRC of “The Piano Tuner”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.