The Noise of Time

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Reviewed by Jess
📕📗📘📙📒

For some reason I found myself drawn to this book by the blurb alone. The story opens in Russia, 1937, with a man waiting outside his apartment to be taken away by the authorities. We don’t know why, we just know he’s scared. And then we go back to the start to discover the truth. It’s an engrossing account of life in Stalin’s regime – you feel the pressure and fear building up with every page you turn, and the short, punchy paragraphs certainly encourage this. You really get a sense of the power of a dictator’s force on Dmitri’s life; the blacklisting, coercion, threats and death all around. I was thankful for some respite from his nervous disposition when Dmitri speaks lovingly of his wife and children, but I guess that’s how one would feel in that time; no rest, no hiding, only fear. Barnes has portrayed this so excellently through the eyes of an oppressed artist, made all the more fascinating by referencing the real life composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Truly a gripping read.