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Title: Interesting and informative...initially
Review: The book started out on an interesting premise: the mysterious piano workshop. The first chapters are quite charming and entertaining as we get to know the main characters and their appreciation for the piano and some of its history in Western Europe, which satisfies the piano enthusiast in me. The introduction of the piano's mechanism is adequate but not very engaging, as the nature of topic, perhaps. After the focus shifted essentially to the author's social life in Paris, however, the book becomes a tiresome series of journal entries and seeming existential profundities. The characters become progressively less interesting as they're examined, but not quite human enough to induce empathy. Overall, I'm disappointed by this book's failure to deliver on its promise (to me, at least), and resorting to the formula of let's examine the Europeans and their quaint ways...
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