Beautifully written fiction, some gorgeous writing and passages on music. Will be recommending widely!

The Variations is a lyrical novel following a woman with a gift to hear the dead and her grandson who inherits that gift at her death.
Interweaving themes of death with those of love and family, Langley creates a haunting and intriguing story that will stay with me for a long time. A story of finding oneself with a supernatural twist, this is a beautiful and abstract work and I will be recommending to my audience!

Not my favourite fitzcarraldo novel but I like trying new authors being published by this indie house! Thank you for my copy!

A book that made me wonder, kept me thinking and fell in love with the excellent storytelling.
A new to me author that I loved.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A sense of dislocation was the prevalent response I had to this book.
Narratives are fragmented through different characters and times. However the story "centres" on the life of Selda Heddle who was educated at Agnes's Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children, . This title encapsulates the ambiguity around what this actually is.

We encounter Wolf who has his inherited his grandmother's "Gift" as he goes to her remote Cornish home to find out more about her death, her past and what this means for his own experience of the Gift.

There's a lot about the creative process, "genius" and the Gift doesn't have a standard definition . Our understanding of the Gift accretes as the story progresses. Is it just a musical talent, an ability to enter the hinterland between life and death or something else?

Variation in music is about varying a central theme/motif and the writing process mirrors that. The reader has to work hard to construct meaning and I found the book to have a febrile, disturbing quality. that I have called "dislocation".

There was a nightmarish quality to the scenes in Greenland and the journey to the concert in the mountains. The reader has to constantly be aware of the shifting sand of the narrative, to keep any sense of equilibrium which the author is constantly challenging.

I guess it's a very compulsive read which mirrors the Gift itself in that the reader is trying to communicate with something amorphous.

Skilful and challenging.

This is an unusual book. At its simplest, it is the story of Selda, a gifted musician and composer, her daughter Anya and her grandson Wolf.. But Selda's gift is more than musical talent and Wolf has inherited it.

The book opens with Wolf's arrival at Agnes's Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children where he is seeking help. It's a gripping opening and cleverly introduces the idea of the gift which is clearly difficult to describe. It seems to involve hearing sounds that may or may not be music - is it a form of tinnitus? - but also some connection with ghosts of the past. It comes and goes and can be a great psychological burden.

I think it is a great challenge for authors to write credibly about aural impressions but this book's looping structure and changing perspectives seems to manage this very effectively. But it is a long book and not an easy read. I finished it feeling somewhat inadequate and thinking that I must have missed many allusions and deeper thoughts (I often find this after reading books published by Fitzcarraldo, yet I continue to seek out their distinctive blue covers in bookshops...)

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I'm a big Fitzcarraldo fan and have read all of the 50+ novels they've published. But this just didn't work for me.

There is some beautiful writing here, and the underlying idea of the Agnes's Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children and of the gift is interesting (if a touch Harry Potterish) but the novel had far too much uninteresting plot and character development for my taste and I just could not connect.

Patrick Langley’s labyrinthine novel plays out in a world that both is and isn’t the one we know. Historical events are recognisable but the timelines are wrong or their features bleed into each other – the Coventry Blitz still happens but in 1937 not 1940; and the inexplicable Strasbourg dancing plague somehow merges with Milan’s later singing plague. In this version of reality, some people are born with a “gift.” Their heads are filled with the voices of the dead which sometimes take over, expressed through music or bouts of spontaneous singing. Many have been absorbed into a sect-like organisation of Agnesians, becoming wards of the St. Agnes Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children. Langley’s fragile plot revolves around the death of one of these former “wards, hermit-like, avant-garde composer Selda Heddle, whose work closely resembles John Cage’s - both in its structure and shifting philosophies. Selda’s found dead in a field close to her home, an apparent victim of a vicious snow storm. The mystery of what led her to walk out to her death ties the narrative together.

Langley’s novel’s broken down into three sections passing from Ellen now Dean of the Hospice, once Selda’s closest companion; then to Selda’s grandson Wolf inheritor of her “gift” and finally to Selda herself. Music is central here both as practice and as metaphor, as Langley explores notions of connection and disconnection, harmony versus disharmony, ritual and belief versus science, memory and the legacies of history - both individual and collective. It’s a dense, atmospheric piece, often lyrical, frequently beautifully observed and shot through with an array of arresting images, real and imagined mythologies. Its richly-textured, descriptive passages and ornate settings, particularly in Ellen’s slightly gothic opening sections, sometimes reminded me of a more restrained or understated China Miéville or even Mervyn Peake. A preoccupation with soundscapes, landscapes, and the ancestral past had something of an Alan Garner-ish sensibility – on some level Langley seems engaged in constructing an oblique commentary on the trajectory of post-WW2 Britain from the chaos of war to climate change and the damage wrought by capitalism, including questions raised by the recent pandemic. It’s an ambitious, absorbing, intricate piece but I didn’t feel it always lived up to its initial promise, the later episodes felt particularly stretched out, and the speculative aspects don’t always blend well with the more realist ones. I also found it increasingly difficult to work out what it was Langley wanted me to take from Selda’s story, even the parts I found most intriguing. But it’s a novel I’m glad to have read and Langley’s an author I’ll definitely come back to in the future.

The Variations is a magic realism tale both atmospheric and thought provoking. Dealing with themes of grief, family, illness, music and its link with memory.

This was way out of my comfort zone and not something I’d usually read but I’m so glad I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Original and beautifully written, I’d highly recommend.

I’d describe this book as realistic fiction. The author has done a fantastic job of creating imaginary characters and situations that depict the world and society. The characters focus on themes of growing, self-discovery and confronting personal and social problems. The language is clear, concise, and evocative, with descriptions that bring the setting and characters to life. Dialogue is natural and authentic, and the pacing is well-balanced, with enough tension and release to keep the reader engaged.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

The Variations by Patrick Langley is a novel of startling originality about music and the difficulty—or impossibility—of living with the past. The story follows Wolf, a young man who inherits a strange gift from his grandmother, Selda Heddle: the ability to hear the voices and sounds of the past. When Selda dies, Wolf is overwhelmed by the cacophony of voices in his head, and he must find a way to make sense of his new reality.

The Variations is a beautifully written novel that explores the power of music to connect us to the past, the present, and the future. Langley's prose is lyrical and evocative, and he creates a vivid sense of place and time. The characters are complex and well-developed, and the plot is both suspenseful and thought-provoking.

One of the most striking things about The Variations is its exploration of the relationship between music and memory. Langley shows how music can be a powerful tool for accessing our memories, both good and bad. The voices that Wolf hears in his head are often from his own past, and they force him to confront memories that he has been trying to forget. But music can also be a source of comfort and healing, and it helps Wolf to come to terms with his grandmother's death and his own place in the world.

The Variations is a novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. It is a story about the power of music, the importance of family, and the difficulty of living with the past. I highly recommend it.

This was a very well written book and there are some beautiful passages here, although I am not a fan of music centered books and that threw me off a little bit. It's one of those cases that it is not the fault of the book but my personal taste. Still, it was engaging enough for me to finish reading it.

This is a review of an ARC I received thanks to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo. This is one of those books that defies definition. A little bit magical realism, it tells the story of Selma Heddle, a reclusive composer who was educated at Agnes’s Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children. The ‘gift’ is the ability (curse?) to commune with ancestors through music and sound, and this gift has been passed on to Selma’s grandson Wolf, who turns up at the Hospice desperate for help in dealing with his legacy. The plus points of this book: the concept is intriguing, the thought that acoustics and sound can provide a link with the past and consciousnesses that precede the current time. The writing, at times is excellent and the author manages to present three different POVs very well. The minuses? It is overwritten, at over 450 pages way too long for the content provided; I would also say that you need a much better understanding of music than your average person does (me included here!) to appreciate the nuances of the story. Finally, I’m not sure if the arc I received is the same as the copy that is going to be published but it definitely needs another proofreader/editor to go through it! The number of typos was irritating and actually started to get in the way of the reading experience.

I'm afraid this book absolutely wasn't for me and it was a real struggle to read. The language is beautiful but it's as if the sentences (or perhaps phrases is a better description) are constructed for the ways the words fit together rather than to tell the story. It was very disjointed, difficult to follow and completely failed to hold my interest despite my being a real fan of magical realism. I know other reviewers have been enthralled so let's just say that this author and I have a real disconnect.

This is a book I will read again.
I really liked how music, instruments and radios also became storytellers and voices in the book. Beautifully written and very atmospheric. The cold setting just adds.
Seldie and Wolf are family but also artists and it's their story too.
A unique book.


One very minor grizzle- Americanised spellings

A book that felt almost filmic, I enjoyed this narrative a lot. An ethereal narrative of music, family and illness.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo editions for the ARC of this beautiful book . I need start this review taking about the magical realism in this book, I adore the balance between the legacy of a family, your own passions in this case music and art and find the own peace with your own past. There writing style is pretty unique in a way and pretty lyrical in other ways but I sense this may be a reason for many people dislike this book since it make really hard read it. I did like it because it make the whole book very unique. In overall I really enjoyed this book, I really enjoyed the characters and it is a book I would recommend.

“They claimed they could remember only the sensation, overwhelming but not unpleasant, of being surrounded by other people; not just the dozens in the guildhall, but thousands […] of singers, making earth and heaven shake with their collective song, which, despite its volume and its magnitude, had a whisper-quiet quality to it, like the faintest rustle from a million distant wings.” Patrick Langley’s dazzling new novel The Variations, out 7 September from Fitzcarraldo Editions, is a tremendous feat of storytelling, an ode to song itself and a thrilling saga about the legacies of family, both creative and traumatic, the pursuit of a life devoted to craft and gifts, and that creative spirit as both a force and a burden. It opens with ‘Frau Trauffea’, my much-loved Strasbourg dancing plague, but recast as a primarily singing plague, and from there moves through three focal characters — Ellen, Wolf, and Selda — each of whom is connected in life, and each of whom has ‘the gift’, an ability to hear their dead ancestors through song. The novel, elegiac and haunting, almost describes itself in its pages: “A sonata only in the loosest sense. A cycle in three main moments. In length it approaches an epic but its real concern is the stuff of songs, of ballads even: what takes place when people meet, how it changes who they are.” It is so lyrically and so compellingly written, and profoundly moving. I really loved reading it. “We don't know the song but we know how it starts and ends. Out of and back to silence.”

The Variations was an intriguing and atmospheric work that was part homage to music, part family drama, part magical realism and part a thoughtful reflection on how we deal with the past. There was a lyrical feel to the writing, almost dreamlike at times, and the story held my interest throughout as we moved between the three characters' POVs. This is definitely a work that will stick in my mind long after reading, and I recommend it to readers looking for a music-inspired literary fiction read. I would certainly pick up more books by this author in the future, and I am giving The Variations 4.5 stars.