Was I meant to applaud Alisdair Stewart doing….what he did? Because I did. A story with a completely unsympathetic female lead character, who, one feels, would benefit from a spell in a psychiatric unit. One for the charity shop. ( )

Concise, well written extended story that informed the famous film, though it was written after the movie got famous. Luckily I did not remember the script of the movie. It is a killer of a story, with, however, the obligatory Hollywood ending (breaking the thread of connectedness to the piano, by letting it sink and drifting to the surface oneself).

What was really well elaborated in the novel is the central role that the piano plays as a conveyor or proxy of the sensibilities of its player – how music can enchant the soul while allowing souls to meet or repel each other. Campbell and co also treat the classic dilemma of strangers in a foreign, wild society very well by developing two diametrically opposed archetypes in Stewart (settler – hungry for fenced land) and Baines (interpreter between two worlds – going local). The local Maoris also play a healthy role as antidote to Victorian fanciness. I like the Maori woman’s remark on Baines’ tool wasting away with his wife far off in Scotland – such a waste. Also on the way to Stewart’s house there is a hush and stoppage, when the Maori carriers pass the spot where the old man died.

Campbell is one of the best writers on female sensitivities in a positive sense of the word. ( )

In the award-winning film The Piano, writer/director Jane Campion created a story so original and powerful it fascinated millions of moviegoers. This novel stands independent of the film, exploring the mysteries of Ada's muteness, the secret of her daughter's conception, the reason for her strange marriage and the past lives of Baines and Stewart.

As I understand it, this book expands on the stories of the characters from the film. From that I expect it was written after the film, and I got that feeling from the book itself - there was a feeling of something being rushed over or left out. By that I mean that the story and the tensions within it would have benefited from being teased out a little slower, given more time to unfurl. I didn't fully believe in the connections between characters as there wasn't enough fleshing them out.

Having said all that, I did actually enjoy this book a great deal. The writing is of a good quality, and it doesn't stumble awkwardly over the sexual content either. It's given me an appetite to see the film too. ( )

Mediocre at best. Skip & watch the film instead. ( )