This novel was true starting point for the strange case Joyce Hatto. Joyce Hatto (1928-2006) was a pianist who had made a career in the concert without much success or embossed. Her husband, as she now lived ill and removed from the scene, began to edit many records she was supposed to have saved. The critical reception of these was excellent, a myth is created (the artist unknown, immense, recluse) until the deception is discovered: these recordings had been borrowed from other pianists, and sometimes retouched conceal fraud. Joyce Hatto had registered any of them and his name went abruptly musical category ("the greatest pianist you never heard") that various facts. Joyce Hatto was then already dead, and if her husband finally confessed to my knowledge some gray areas still remain: for example, Joyce Hatto she was aware of this mystification? From when? The she disapproved or not?
I think the real story of this false large scale is so amazing in itself it may remain as a foreign body that fiction can not assimilate. The novel transposes the story in a French-Vietnamese context, while resorting to pastiche of music criticism (in plausible pages but conventional enough). Anna Song and Paul Desroches take the place of Joyce Hatto and William Barrington-Coupe. Huy Minh Tranh novelist chooses to believe the explanation Barrington-Coupe ("I did it for love") and draws a delicate book, where Anna Song (between two worlds and two cultures), is just and moving, if his side Paul Desroches remains a rather evanescent character. Writing is wise, but fine and neat. The end her a surprise and I find it beautiful, a proper romantic beauty.
