Listen

Reviews / Votes

By turns discursive, celebratory and reflective . . . a beautifully written paean to music, examining the role that it plays in our lives and what it has meant to Faber himself. He is no snob, but no indulgent populist, either. Instead, he has written the best book of its type since Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise * * Observer * * A series of finely tuned observations formed from personal memories, nuggets of neuroscience and interviews with musical luminaries * * Guardian * * Fresh . . . Unlike any music book I have read. Often very funny as well as piercingly acute * * Scotsman * * Michel Faber wrote this book just for you -- ROBERT FRIPP An extraordinary and compelling 'journey into sound' which examines close and distant listening in all its myriad ramifications, mainly in the form of music both popular and otherwise - and it's particularly good at evaluating music's intrinsic worth from a commercial and aesthetic viewpoint . . . Faber writes beautifully, non-condescendingly and provocatively about something as basic and fundamental to human existence as oxygen, and which like oxygen would be exceedingly hard to do without. I found this, Michel's first non-fiction book, brilliant and a joy to read . . . He's obviously listened and thought long and hard about the act and art of consuming sound/music - essentially, electrochemical reactions in the brain - in all its multitudinous splendor, and he raises many compelling points along the way . . . Listen is right up there with Richard Meltzer's The Aesthetics of Rock and Geoffrey O'Brien's Sonata for Jukebox at the top of my mental music shelf -- GARY LUCAS Praise for Michel Faber: Faber's writing is so dizzyingly accomplished -- KATHRYN HUGHES * * Guardian * * You are unlikely to regret a single hour, day or month spent in Faber's diverting, exuberant and intelligent company * * Financial Times * * A truly gifted writer, an addictive storyteller with a nuanced command of language * * Literary Review * * Faber writes superbly * * Sunday Times * * Faber has shown that he can write in a breathtakingly wide range of styles * * Scotsman * *