The Presence of Music

Résumé du livre

"High summer in Te Makutu ... the scent of new-mown grass bleaching in the sun ... Linda East playiong at the open window of her father's house ... Even in the city, so far from Te Makutu, the picture remained to haunt him, faint but strangely permanent. He was living it up in the city with someone else's wife, and he had never exchanged more than a few stilted sentences with Linda, yet it was Linda he thought of most. He was trying to lose himself in politics and the glare of the city lights, but those faint images of a lost and unmourned childhood persisted. So he went back at last to Te Makutu to pick up the threads; to recapture the dream if he could, and forget it if he couldn't; to satisfy himself. He followed it 12,000 miles, to Europe: Budapest in that tragic, magnificent October of 1956; London, the artistic Mecca of all the young New Zealand emigrés; and finally a quiet sunlit island where the dream slipped away beyond recall and he was safe. ..."--Jacket.