Music Room

When William Fiennes was a small boy, his parents inherited an extraordinary home: a castle full of history, secrets and strange artefacts, the perfect hunting ground for child with a brimming imagination. The family set about welcoming visitors – actors, musicians, travelling fairs, members of the public – but behind these very public scenes a more intimate drama was taking place. William's older brother, Richard, had been diagnosed with severe and debilitating epilepsy.

Within the enchanted world of the house, Richard is a powerful presence: radiating wit, beguilingly eccentric, and yet also the victim of dark and violent moods. The two brothers are devoted, yet as William grows – ever more independent, ever closer to leaving this idyllic home – Richard's life becomes increasingly circumscribed. One day Will receives a phone call: Richard died this morning. Come and join us. The Music Room captures a child's wide-eyed wonder and an adult's grief. Its incantatory prose builds a house that is almost sentient, a landscape bursting with life, and a family animated by generosity and strength. Utterly unique in its sensibility, minutely detailed and tenderly observed, it is not an elegy but a sensory tribute to home, to the workings of memory and imagination, and, above all, a transcendent lovesong for a brother.