Love Is Blind

William Boyd Viking €22.85

Boyd’s latest novel is a typically polished yarn set in the late 1890s. Brodie, the young Scottish hero, is a musician whose work takes him to Paris, where he falls in love with the Russian mistress of a famous pianist. The storytelling is old-fashioned in the best sense. When did a contemporary novel last feature a duel in St Petersburg? But Boyd is a past master of the picaresque, able to describe a Scottish church congregation or a Parisian brothel with the same eye for detail; and few readers will begrudge the time spent in his likeable hero’s company.