The Gustav Sonata Av Rose Tremain

<b>Gustav Perle grows up lonely and watchful in post-war Switzerland, aching for a closeness his own mother cannot give him. </b><br><br>In a small Swiss town still marked by the moral compromises of the Second World War, Gustav finds the companionship he longs for in Anton Zwiebel, a brilliant, fragile boy whose music expresses what neither of them can say aloud. Their bond, forged in childhood in the late 1940s, deepens into an intense attachment that neither fully understands. <br><br><i>The Gustav Sonata </i>follows Gustav and Anton through love, disappointment, and the slow realisation of what they have lost as a result of fear and restraint. Set between the 1940s and early 2000s, The Gustav Sonata is a twentieth-century historical novel that asks what it means to love someone you cannot fully claim, and whether tenderness can survive decades of silence. <br><br><b>‘A perfect novel about life's imperfection... Tremain is writing at the height of her inimitable powers’ Kate Kellaway, <i>Observer </i><br><br>‘Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect... Glorious’ <i>The Times </i></b>