I have allowed time to elapse before reviewing this book as I wished to take care with this post and not rush it as I enjoyed reading it very much indeed. This is Linda's third book and I feel she gets better with each one. I read her second A Lifetime Burning in 2006 and it was one of my books of the year. So delighted to have a copy of Star Gazing arrive on my desk before I left for holiday and able to sit and read it at my leisure while lolling under the olive tree by the swimming pool. What a treat.
Marianne Fraser, who has been blind since birth, lives in Edinburgh with her sister Louise. Marianne is a widow, losing her husband in an oil rig disaster and the shock of this loss causing her to miscarry. So her life is pretty bleak and even though she is now in her forties, she has never truly come to terms with her double loss. One night she and 
Louise, go to the opera and, as a Wagner fan, I was delighted to see that it was Die Walkure. 'People often ask me why I go to the opera when I can't see the singers, act, I can't see the costumes and i can't see any lighting effect....I tell sceptics and doubters that I go to the opera because opera pours a vision of a wider world into my ears in a way that no other art form that I can access does....when I hear the music it goes directly to my heart, it pierces me to my soul and stirs me with nameless emotions, countless ideas and aural pictures'. I know Linda is an opera lover and this feeling described is one I have felt myself, as I quite often find myself listening in the opera house with my eyes closed and letting she sound and beauty wash over me.
It is while Marianne is at the opera one night that she meets Keir Harvey 'Harvey. Like the rabbit. In the film with James Stewart. 'I've never seen it I've been blind since birth'. 'Ah well you missed a good one there' 'You didn't apologize 'What for?' 'When I told you I've been blind since birth, you didn't say I'm sorry in a tragic voice. People usually do'. 'Well, it wasn't my fault so I don't really see why I should apologise. Is it obligatory?
Keir is spiky and to the point and makes no concessions to Marianne's blindness. As their relationship progresses he invites her to come to Skye with him, to his home, so he can 'show' her the stars.
'If you look east one of the brightest starts you'll see is Arcterus. It has a yellow orange glow...they'd sound like....flutes. No piccolos. Shrill. Arcturus looks warmer. A cello maybe...on second thoughts make that a viola'
How do you describe something to a person who has never ever seen anything, has no visual memory to refer to, can only gauge how an object looks by feeling and touch? Try closing your eyes and thinking about this for a while which is what I did. Impossible to know how Marianne feels as when I close my eyes I can still see what I have looked at and can remember, hard to imagine the blankness of never having seen. The use of musical images to paint a picture for Marianne is just so right. Music does this all the time to both the sighted and unsighted if you allow yourself to listen, really listen. I couldn't help thinking of the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss when reading Star Gazing. This symphony paints a graphic picture of a climb up an Alpine mountain with the sounds and sights on the way, the water, the birds singing, all heard in the music. When we reach the summit the sun comes up and the music bursts out into a glorious, triumphant swelling flood of sound which lifts the heart. If Marianne had asked me to describe joy and happiness to her I would have told her about this piece of music.
There is another moment in Star Gazing when Keir is trying to describe snow to Marianne and it says it is dazzling and almost hurts the eyes. 'And if it were a sound?' He gazes at the snow covered landscape. 'You know those strings at the beginning of the Flying Dutchman overture. The very opening chords? That's what it looks like'. Perfect.
Continuing with the music analogy, as counterpoint to the Marianne/Keir relationship we have Louise, her sister, and Garth the Goth. A perfect down to earth balance. Louise is an author, a successful one, of vampire romances. 'Upmarket vampire romance, I hasten to add' 'My books are traditional - just love stories really - but they have to be supernatural because frankly, a good hero is hard to come by these days'. Well, you're telling me. I liked Louise very much, she is warmhearted, loving and kind and later on embarks on a relationship with her helper, web designer and all round gofer, Garth who, despite his ferocious appearance and the chains and studs, is a sensible, kind hearted young man who provides a spicy dash of humour into the narrative. I found myself becoming very fond of these two characters, who both wish the best for Marianne and for her to be happy.
I enjoyed Star Gazing enormously. As mentioned at the start of the post, this is Linda Gillard's third book and I gather that she has just finished her fourth to be published next year. I shall be most interested to read that one in due course as it seems to me that her writing gets better with each story. I think that A Lifetime Burning still remains my favourite so far, even though I think this is better written. The narrative seems to be much more pared down here, no words wasted, clean, flowing and no superfluous ornamentation. This is the kind of writing I admire and like, I cannot bear fuss and frills and this style suits the slightly prickly, tentative nature of the slowly growing love between Marianne and Keir.
Thank you Linda and thank you for the operatic and music references in the story which, for me, enhanced this lovely book.
