{"product_id":"the-variations-isbn-9781681378398","title":"The Variations","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn eerie ability is passed from grandmother to grandson—who now must reckon with a new cacophony of voices and sounds, all from the past, overlaying his life in the present—in this stirring new novel from one of the UK’s most exciting young writers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSelda Heddle, a famously reclusive composer, is found dead in a snowy  field near her Cornish home. She was educated at Agnes’s Hospice for  Acoustically Gifted Children, which for centuries has offered its young  wards a grounding in the gift—an inherited ability to tune into the  voices and sounds of the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen she dies, Selda’s gift passes down  to her grandson Wolf, who must make sense of her legacy, and learn to  live with the newly unleashed voices in his head. Ambitious and  exhilarating, \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel of startling originality about music and the difficulty—or impossibility—of living with the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"If Hilary Mantel’s \u003ci\u003eBeyond Black\u003c\/i\u003e were written by John Banville channelling M. John Harrison, the result would look something like this. And yet Langley has made something new and unexpected about how the present is, necessarily and always, an echo corridor of the past. Beautifully written, powered by a wonderfully intelligent conceptual dynamo, and deftly sprung with surprises, \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e is an utterly original book about haunting. It is strange, resonant, and, yes, haunting.\"— Neel Mukherjee, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Lives of Others\u003c\/i\u003e\"There is something otherworldly about the setting of \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e, and its alien qualities are only enhanced by the occasional references that remind us we’re in contemporary England....For all \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e’ unusual elements, Langley handles traditional storytelling modes expertly. He can nail a character in a few lines... He can do action. And he has a knack for ending chapters with the expertise of a theatrical director ramping up the tension and then—curtain!—dropping into silence....a book whose oddness stretches the reader without estranging us. It asks more questions than it answers, but provides plenty of delight to compensate.\" —John Self, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The wonderful latest from Langley (\u003ci\u003eArkady\u003c\/i\u003e) tells the story of a British avant-garde composer, semi-estranged from her family and friends, who dies while walking in a snowstorm in Cornwall...the story of four generations of 'gifted' individuals unfolds, taking readers from WWII to the present, from Selda’s birth to her death. Langley is a mesmerizing guide to Selda’s music and the fantastical world of the hospice, a 'variously demonized, patronized, scorned, venerated, vilified, and today largely ignored and near-bankrupted institution.' This is exquisite.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Ecstasy is a word I’d happily associate with Patrick Langley’s lyrical and looping novel \u003ci\u003eThe Variations,\u003c\/i\u003e a work with a similarly thrilling Nabokovian intrigue in the relationship between patterning, form and meaning....it takes place in a world that looks very much like our own but feels alien and strange, as if brushed by the supernatural. In \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e, reality is ever so slightly askew.\" \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e—Matthew Janney,\u003ci\u003e The Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"The Variations \u003c\/i\u003eis a wonderfully mysterious novel suffused with a Lynchian eeriness. I was totally under Langley's spell and under the thrall of the eerie rhythms governing The Variations. Simply unforgettable.\" —Brandon Taylor, author \u003ci\u003eReal Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If Hilary Mantel’s \u003ci\u003eBeyond Black\u003c\/i\u003e were written by John Banville  channelling M. John Harrison, the result would look something like this.  And yet Langley has made something new and unexpected about how the  present is, necessarily and always, an echo corridor of the past.  Beautifully written, powered by a wonderfully intelligent conceptual  dynamo, and deftly sprung with surprises, \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e is an utterly original book about haunting. It is strange, resonant, and, yes, haunting.” —Neel Mukherjee, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Lives of Others\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e“The Variations\u003c\/i\u003e is a passionate meditation on how past and  present meet and annihilate one another in the flare of individual human  experience. Music is presented as a kind of weather, blustery and  changeable, unlimited by its own time. It takes you up, puts you down,  whirls you away. Langley’s prose, lyrical and accurate, enlivens and  illuminates. A tremendous, seriously ambitious novel.” —M. John Harrison, author of \u003ci\u003eWish I Was Here\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I thought \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e was remarkable. I loved its  hallucinatory vision of music as both gift and affliction, as a sort of  crystallised form of human history. A book of strange and revelatory  genius.” —Anna Smaill, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Chimes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A skillfully told story about inheritance and inspiration, music and  time. Langley has a fine eye for detail and scene-making, and \u003ci\u003eThe Variations\u003c\/i\u003e is full of startling observations and images.” —Martin MacInnes, author of \u003ci\u003eIn Ascension\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePatrick Langley\u003c\/b\u003e is a novelist and art critic. His first novel, \u003ci\u003eArkady\u003c\/i\u003e, was longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and the Deborah Rogers Writers Prize. He is an editor at \u003ci\u003ee-flux\u003c\/i\u003e and writes about art for \u003ci\u003efrieze\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eArt Agenda\u003c\/i\u003e, and other publications. \u003ci\u003eThe Variations \u003c\/i\u003eis his second novel.  He lives in London.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301232726245,"sku":"NP9781681378398","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681378398.jpg?v=1767742040","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-variations-isbn-9781681378398","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}