I stopped at 45%. I liked the narrator, he was easy to listen to, but the story dragged a lot. It was pretty boring.

The piano tuner at a music school reveals a tale about the owner of the school after she quickly dies after a brief illness, her distraught husband who isn't sure what to do with the school, and an unlikely alliance with the husband to transition the school to a piano store.
Through out this story, the piano tuner talks about his prodigy status and how his biggest failure made him turn from music and into piano tuning for the intricacies of the instrument.

Interesting but at least in audiobook form, it wasn't clear where the leaps to the past were and how they were correlating, except in the narrator's mind.

#arc
#netgalley
#thepianotuner

I really wanted to love this one but just couldn't quite get into it. I feel like the writing was good but the story line just didn't keep me captivated. Maybe it was lost in translation?

The Piano Tuner has a musical cadence to it, that few books have accomplished. This book is a loosely woven story about one man's love for music and another man's longing for friendship.
This book feels unfinished; it ends abruptly ends without warning and without obvious plot resolution. I wish it were longer and the various storylines resolved. That said the quality of sentence structure, and of word choice is some of the most beautiful prose I have read. I was impressed at how well the writing was captured in translation because translation can also go poorly.

This seems to be the type of book that only gets better the more times you have read it, and I will be testing this theory.

The Piano Tuner by Chiang-sheng Kuo is a Short Read/Listen!

The unnamed piano tuner is also the narrator of this story. By his own admission, he's in his 40's, balding, and unattractive. As a child he was a musical prodigy who became a piano teacher in his adulthood. He speaks at length about his choice of transitioning to the role of a piano tuner. He shares with the reader/listener details of his life as it was and as it is now...

As I listened to this audiobook, I thought perhaps I was missing parts of the story. It jumps unexpectedly to various timelines and to who is speaking. I re-listened to sections hoping for better comprehension but I didn't miss anything. What I heard the first time is what I heard again.

I feel pretty confident in saying I'm adept at following a complicated story and discovering the underlying meaning(s) within, but this short listen has me stumped. The narrator rambles and jumps from topic to topic, never getting to an end point. While listening I would completely lose focus, the desire to continue, and finishing this was tough.

Is this the piano tuner's story or the story of those around him? Is he trying to substantiate his choices in life or is he masking something deeper such as 'fear of failure' and 'lack of self-esteem'? See? I really do want to know more!

The audiobook narrator, Fernando Chien, does a wonderful job of voicing, however it's not enough to keep me connected to the story or the characters. The writing is lovely but the construction of the story lacks connectivity for me.

I'm so glad Chiang-sheng Kuo has a dedicated and supportive readership/audience. Sadly, The Piano Tuner is not a story that resonates with me.

2.5 stars rounded down.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Chiang-sheng Kuo for an ALC of this book. It's a pleasure to give my honest review.

Just as the narrator of The Piano Tuner is the embodiment of promise unfulfilled, so too is this novel. The story, such as it is, is not without interest, but it unfolds in a nonlinear way that is sometimes hard to follow when listening. It's likely that the print version provides the reader with a more satisfactory experience, for although the reader's voice is pleasant to hear, it does not differentiate between the narrator and other characters (of which there are few) . The Piano Tuner, however, is not really about the story, but rather the about beauty and love, about the piano and its relationship to players and tuners, which serves as a metaphor for relationships of all sorts, including business and love. The novel succeeds best when describing music and its makers. The Piano Tuner has a limited audience, but those among it will find much to appreciate and ponder.

I was not the right reader for this book. I don’t care about pianos or timbre or famous pianists, and the story of the piano tuner was presented in such a jumbled fashion that it never grabbed me. I completely missed whatever makes this novella “a delightful read”, as described in the blurb. I thought it was both boring and confusingly written. It had an abrupt ending, which I suppose was fitting. Really, why should the end of the book be any more coherent than the rest of it? 2.5 stars

I received free copies of the audiobook and ebook from the publisher.

Thank you Dreamscape media and netgalley for the ARC Audiobook. All thoughts are my own.

This book was a quick listen. I thought that it was an interesting story about a piano tuner. I thought that the perspective of having the narrator be the main character however telling his story as a narrator instead of someone else telling it was interesting. I had not listened to a story told that way. This book is about a piano tuner who is a very gift pianist however his dad doesn't want to pursue his gift. The piano tuner is gifted piano lesson because of his quick learning. As he grows up he realizes he won't be a professional pianist and ends up being a piano tuner.

As a classical pianist myself, I felt a kinship to some of the experiences the narrator described. I also enjoyed the many nuances and references to piano music history. However, I am not sure if it was all lost in translation, but I did not enjoy the writing. It felt choppy and not as sweeping as I had expected. I am assuming the original story is much better in its native language.

Woah. I am stunned. Nonlinear books can be confusing to read. And they’re even more confusing to listen to. But I find myself enchanted by the way the plot ebbs and flows…like the concepts of music and time that the narrator finds so comfortable. As I drew closer to the end of the book, I truly felt as if snow were falling all around me—the way the narrator imagined so early in the book before he had ever seen real snow. Confusion is at home here. And while I don’t love that feeling, it seems to belong.

I don’t have much more to say about the plot—it was sad, but only as sad as the saddest notes a piano could produce. Conceptual, I know. But this book was more concept than narrative, I think, in the best way. But it certainly wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s a lonely story—the narrator refers more than once to the loneliness of the black keys on a piano, separated from the other black keys. Yet, the narrator doesn’t seem to truly recognize his own loneliness.

The narrator goes unnamed. He is simply the piano tuner. He’s self-aware, which is something I love in a single POV story. He views himself as a vessel for telling someone else’s story. He even admits that he doesn’t need to talk about himself, because he’s just the narrator. But throughout the book, you begin to see that this is his story.

He is simple and broken and lacks understanding of others, so he seeks solace in music and memory. Honestly, it’s so stunning. I originally thought this book would be a winner for all Asian children whose parents wanted to see them become a musical prodigy…but now I’m not so sure.

Frankly, there is no overarching lesson in the story of the piano tuner. But the way he talks about timbre and sound is the sort of outline for how he perceives the world. It’s fascinating. But without triumph. There is no happy ending, but this book is beautiful and deserves a read.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Chiang-Sheng Kuo (and translators) for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A nameless piano tuner floats us through the past and present experiences he’s had, people he’s met, struggles he’s endured.

Unfortunately, I did not find this as interesting as I’d hoped. There were a few surprises that interested me but I don’t feel were elaborated on much.

To be honest, I want the book on Emily! Her character intrigued me and I wished to hear more about her throughout the novel.

This is an interesting read, though I believe the audiobook version may be a little bit more difficult to follow than the print edition.
The story is told be a narrator/piano tuner. It essentially starts with the death of a music school director and the unusual friendship between the Director’s husband and the tuner that developed after her death.
The tuner tells a tale fro his youth to the present day - switching between memories and current events- allowing the reader to take an entire life journey in a few short chapters. Along the way, the narrator also imparts some very insightful ideas and knowledge about the musical world, pianos in particular, and human nature.
The ending did not feel particularly satisfying, although I did have a sense for the narrator that he had come full circle and resolved some things for himself.
I struggled a bit with the udiobook as the narrator really didn’t always make clear if the widower or the piano tuner was speaking, so I was sometimes a bit confused at to this.
Otherwise, a good read for a musical reader!
THanks net Galley for the advance copy!

This book about a nameless narrator, the piano tuner, examines the lives of pianists and the relationship between artists and their art. We follow the tuner as he befriends the widowed husband of a young violinist in the wake of the violinists death. From this we get the musings and other stories from the tuners early life, his struggles as a prodigy and his statements as to why he became a piano tuner instead of a teacher or a pianist.

I honestly don’t know fully how to feel about this book, I enjoyed the beginning and the tuners statements resonated with me as an artist. I did not care for the way the story ended, in the end we see the tuner essentially have a meltdown when the widower informs him that he is going to spend a year in America trying to repair his relationship with his son, through this we are also given the real reason the tuner didn’t finish school. Part of me found it poignant with the idea that art in a way destroys the artist seems to be the under current of the story, and the other part of me questioned everything the narrator said throughout the entirety of the novel in a negative way.

In the end I found the narration of the story pleasant and well done and the translation is very well done and understandable.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.