FIRE ON ALL SIDES

INSANITY, INSOMNIA AND THE INCREDIBLE INCONVENIENCES OF LIFE

Quercus, 272pp, £16.99, Oldie price £11.88 inc p&p James Rhodes is a concert pianist who suffered serious sexual abuse as a six-year-old at school in north London. His memoir, Instrumental, which chronicled not only the story of his abuse but also the salvatory role music has played in his life, became a bestseller when it was published in 2014. Now Rhodes has written a follow-up, its title taken from a stage direction in Don Giovanni as the Don is dragged down to hell: ‘fire on all sides; earthquake’. Rhodes describes how he copes with deep serial depression, and the book is a kind of journal of his anxiety as he tours Europe playing Chopin, Bach and Rachmaninov. Somehow he maintains his concert schedule, but most days, he writes, he has an urge to ‘eviscerate’ himself. Like his first book, Fire on All

Sides is ‘highly readable’, wrote Hannah Jane Parkinson in the

Guardian – and, against the odds,

‘The book is a kind of journal of his anxiety as he tours Europe’

‘very funny’. Each chapter is prefaced by a feel-good quote that Rhodes then ‘translates’ into more cynical language. Parkinson, like every reviewer, praised the author for his ‘searing honesty’: Rhodes reveals ‘examples of horrible behaviour to girlfriends, of his paranoia, even the sort of sex he likes’. The book is a ‘brilliant, jangling opus to Rhodes’s frantic mind,’ wrote Katie Glass in the Sunday Times.

Rhodes certainly ‘writes like he plays’, said Johanna Thomas-corr in the Evening Standard – ‘with power and intensity, owning his flaws’. This isn’t always savoury; there’s ‘something icky about the way he leers at pretty (always younger) women’. But with Rhodes it’s a case of ‘talk or die’. As with his music, his writing contains a ‘passion and jeopardy’ that can be ‘electrifying’.