{"product_id":"the-great-concert-of-the-night-isbn-9781681373959","title":"The Great Concert of the Night","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Why isn’t Jonathan Buckley better known? His novel of love, death and melancholy comedy, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Concert of the Night,\u003c\/i\u003e is captivating.” —John Banville\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e David has just spent New Year’s Eve alone, watching \u003ci\u003eLe Grand Concert de la Nuit\u003c\/i\u003e,  a film in which his former lover Imogen starred. In the early hours of  the new year, consoled and tormented by her ethereal presence, he begins  to write. What follows is a brilliantly various journal, chronicling a  year in the life of a thinking man. David works as a curator at the  ailing Sanderson-Perceval Museum in southern England, whose small  collection of porcelain, musical instruments, crystals, velvet  mushrooms, and glass jellyfish is as eccentric and idiosyncratic as the  long-dead collectors’ tastes. David himself is a connoisseur of the  derelict and nonutilitarian, of objects removed from the flow of time.  Refusing the imposed order of a straightforward chronology, his journal  moves fluidly back and forth in time, filled with fragments of life  remembered, imagined, and recorded, from memories of his past life with  Imogen or with his ex-wife, Samantha, to reflections on the lives and  relics of female saints or the history of medicine. There are quotations  from Seneca, Meister Eckhart, and the Goncourt brothers mixed in with  the equally compelling imagined words of fictional film directors,  actors, and, always, the fascinating Imogen, who is alive now only “in  the perpetual present of the sentence.” In \u003ci\u003eThe Great Concert of the Night\u003c\/i\u003e,  Jonathan Buckley expertly interweaves sexual despair, cultural  critique, the plot lines of one man’s quietly brilliant life, and the  problems and paradoxes of writing, especially writing about and to the  dead.\"Ultimately, Buckley’s novel is both very entertaining and very sad—a book of high artifice that feels true. Addictive, elegiac, and pristinely paced.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Why isn’t Jonathan Buckley better known? His novel of love, death and melancholy comedy, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Concert of the Night,\u003c\/i\u003e is captivating.” —John Banville\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[O]ne reads this beautifully written book because the author provides food for thought with reflections on love, the imagination and death, laced with citations from Marcus Aurelius, Blaise Pascal and the Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. There is also a drolly comic side to the story . . .” —Bruce Boucher, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003e[A]dmirable and frequently beautiful . . . aptly reflects the capriciousness of memory . . .” —Emily Bobrow, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Great Concert of the Night\u003c\/i\u003e, Jonathan Buckley’s beguiling tenth novel, is . . . an occasion for speculation, reflection, distraction, and aimless wonder. . . . This superb novel generates that strangely familiar sensation that something wonderful has been revealed, momentarily.” —Ron Slate\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What a pleasure to be immersed—lost really—in this elegant, erudite, seductive, and deeply moving chronicle of a sensibility and a life.” —Carole Maso \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Buckley is a talented verbal painter, with a fine eye for detail.” —Mary Fitzgerald, \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “This smart, witty novel by an undeservedly under-known writer embraces love, loss and a man’s obsession with his dead lover.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e, '100 Best Books to Read This Summer'\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Exactly why Buckley is not already revered and renowned as a novelist in the great European tradition remains a mystery that will perhaps only be addressed at that final godly hour when all the overlooked authors working in odd and antique modes will receive their just rewards. . . . The figure of Imogen—figured and refigured in descriptions of her various screen roles—remains fascinating throughout. She is entirely imaginary, utterly real and alive forever ‘in the perpetual present of the sentence, where nobody is alive and nobody dead.’” —Ian Samson, \u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautifully written, stacked to the rafters with wit and warmth and real resonance . . . a novel well worth visiting.” —Travis Holland, \u003ci\u003eFiction Writers Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJonathan Buckley\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eGhost MacIndoe\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSo He Takes  the Dog\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNostalgia\u003c\/i\u003e, and several others. He was the 2015 winner of the  BBC National Short Story Award. He lives in Hove, England.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302754701541,"sku":"NP9781681373959","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681373959.jpg?v=1767739629","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-great-concert-of-the-night-isbn-9781681373959","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}