This book was my mother's recommendation- she said she really enjoyed it so I picked it up to see what the fuss was about. Frozen Music centres around the lives of two people; Linus, a dreamy boy living in Sweden, and Esther, a serious young girl living in England. The two have known about each other their whole lives, because their mothers write to each other regularly. Eventually they meet, sparking off a chain of events neither of them could foresee. I couldn't get past this feeling of growing deja-vu in the first few chapters. What did this remind me of? I wondered. I got it in a scene describing a grown up Esther watching a man dive off a high cliff into water. Call me ridiculous, but I do believe Marika Cobbold loosely based her book off Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. For the first half of the book, I felt like I was reading a dumbed-down version of Rand's work. Cobbold also has two characters who are extremely active and extremely passive - the self-willed Esther who is determined at all costs to get her own way, and the compliant Linus, who seems to drift through life with no definite viewpoints on it one way or the other. Even the professions are the same- Linus is an architect who loves his work with a fierce passion, while Esther is a journalist. This feeling of deja-vu did spoil the reading experience for me, at least for the first part. Other than that, it flowed well enough and the author does have her own unique style. Frozen Music falls under the somewhat dubious category of 'intelligent chick lit'. I am not a fan of syrupy romance as a rule, and I don't like books where the ending is predictable- and with most chick lit, you know from the start that girl A and boy B will end up together. If that is your kind of thing, then you might like this, as it is written a bit better than most and leaves you with a bit more to think about. Having said that, for me once the deja-vu feeling passed the story did lapse into cheesiness in parts, especially the parts pertaining to love, with the character concerned getting all starry-eyed and gooey. There is a little unpredictability in the middle that did make this book a little more interesting though, but in the end that alone wasn't enough for me to like it. In fact, I was fully prepared to hate it and write an angry rant about Cobbold ripping off Rand but then the story moved far enough in another direction for me to concede that maybe the similarities were a coincidence. And even if it wasn't, that she had at least tried to do something a bit different with the story. I have to say though that despite my irritation initially the book was easy to read and even well-written in parts, with some interesting language used (I love the quirky ways foreign language authors express themselves when they write in English). It's too bad that in the end it was cheesy and too chick lit- it could have been much more.
Completed, but it took me longer than many books of a similar length......Perhaps if I was in a more upbeat/less tired place I could have gotten through this quicker.[return][return]Pleasant story where Linus and Esther grow up hearing about each other (their step/mothers are friends), they never actually meet until well into adult life where their respective jobs bring them into conflict. There are plenty of great characters, some great humour (one of the things that kept me reading to be honest) and a reasonable story
What do You think about Frozen Music (2000)?
I spent about the first half of this book being frustrated and impatient at how long it was taking for the protagonist, Esther, to even meet Linus "the only man I've ever loved" yet alone walking out on him as she states in the prologue. I found her behaviour increasingly irritating as well. As I read on however I found myself becoming sympathetic to Esther's plight; she has a breakdown and completely loses confidence in her ability to make even the smallest decision after a couple of her actions (she perceives) lead to some disastrous consequences affecting others. Her story becomes a comment on the nature and consequence of news reportage and "truth telling" by the media. Eventually she does meet Linus and thereafter I could barely put the book down until I'd finished. I can't say why exactly, just that it was a great read. A few years ago I read another of Marika Cobbold's books, Shooting Butterflies, and I enjoyed it a lot too. I feel fairly confident that I will read Frozen Music again.
—Linda
