Title: Badly out of tune
Product review: Daniel Mason has his moments as a writer and and works well with description, but his characters and plot are preposterous. The entire linchpin of "Piano Tuner" never rings true, and when the action turns to Burma, it's an exercise in second-rate Maugham with Cliff Notes Conrad thrown in. But the worst is the portrayal of an entire nation as populated by heroic white men and "inscrutable" ciphers, capable only of seduction or betrayal. I thought the fashion for novels by "junior orientalists" had run its course with Mark Saltzman; sadly, I was mistaken.
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