Listening to Brahms

“Then I hear it. The sound of the piano. And what’s more, as if it’s drifting up through time as well as space, the piece being played is Brahms’ ‘Rhapsody No 2’ in G minor.”

December, 1989. While Margaret is visiting her sister and her husband at Blackheath Vicarage for a family Christmas, she finds the diary she kept during a school exchange visit to Germany in the summer of 1954. Painful memories from that time come flooding back when she hears a Brahms rhapsody being played on the piano by Jonathan, a consultant at the local hospital.

At the age of 17, she believed she had found the love of her life when a young pianist, Peter, kissed her and quoted poetry to her. But the traumatic events that followed changed her life forever. Now, 35 years later, emotional feelings she thought she had suppressed for ever are once again awoken as she begins to fall in love with Jonathan. As the family gathers to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, it appears that her sister’s marriage is beginning to crumble.

While Margaret’s story is unfolding, the Soviet Union is collapsing. Ceausescu and his wife are executed in Romania, Havel becomes president of Czechoslovakia and the border dividing East and West Germany has come down, emphasising the pointlessness of the ever-changing divisions and alliances between peoples.

“The photographs I took and the diary I kept during a school exchange visit to Germany provided me with the primary source for the part of the story set in 1954. Whenever I have heard Brahms’ ‘Rhapsody No 2’ since then, I have been transported back to that time. I wanted to use these two elements to write an entirely fictional story emphasising the ability of music and photographs to recall memories and emotions,” says Rosemary, of her inspiration for the novel.