Leoni Hofmeyr's Reviews > The Song Before it is Sung

A brilliant book. The main character, in true Cartwright style, is an isolated man, ever hopeful that some good will come of his life, but aware of the limitations of himself and human relationships. The range of other characters are treated with the (also so truly Cartwright/mixture) of pathos and cynicism. No proclaiming.
A complex story, with lots to think about in terms of conscience, good and evil, force of history/society vs personal choice, casual encounters and enduring love. The complexities are demonstrated artfully, e.g. the subtle underlying fascim in the ostensibly anti-Nazi UK of the time.
I do love the way this man writes! Adjectives placed with accute precision, my favourite being the "resolute tweedy" of Oxford. Contrasting landscapes (Oxford, Jerusalem, Germany)drawn casually, labourless but perfectly clear, e.g. "He saw that every cobblestone and every path and every carved ceiling and every inch of lawn in Oxfrod had been willed... at Oxford he saw what hundreds of years of human tending can achieve."
"Conrad knows that you can hold at the same time different landscapes in your head - or in your fibres - for instance, the broad openness of Africa and the distilled beauty of Oxford.
More gems: "It's a strange thing, this tendency to claim for oneself the higher moral ground. It's tactical rather than real and it's increasingly common, so that eople excuse themselves on the ground of their higher feelings. They are cursed, as they gravely admit, with a more acute consciousness than other people"
"... of course he has danced before, but now he too is in on the secret: dancing is a sort of surrender to the sensual, to the clear message that music is life and life is love and sex and longing, strangely and incomprehensibly distilled."