I can only guess that someone advised him that no one would read the book if he didn’t spice things up. Thus we have the sexual adventures of the central character, Derek Gunderson, a twenty-four-year-old pianist and honours student at the Conservatorium. Derek is brilliant but highly opinionated, almost insufferably so. Pentecost clearly knows a great deal about music, but is too anxious to wear this erudition on his sleeve.

The result is that the narrative now and then slips into lecture mode and the tone becomes patronisingly didactic. Spliced awkwardly onto this sometimes pompous discourse are highly explicit, even prurient accounts of the sexual exploits of Derek and his friends. Occasionally, too, Pentecost disrupts suspension of disbelief and enters directly into the text as implied author.

At these moments, the narrative voice takes on an annoyingly avuncular register, imposing a false intimacy of shared values and beliefs upon the reader. This first-time novelist has plenty to offer and should be encouraged to have faith in the intrinsic value of his best material: that is, serious music and the world of the young musician.

There is real promise here, but Pentecost needs to work on control of tone. And what are book editors doing these days? Embarrassingly, there is a factual mistake when it is claimed that Mozart wrote The Four Seasons. I would have thought it was pretty common knowledge that this work is by Vivaldi.