A journey into darkness

There is only one thing Edgar Drake cares more for than pianos and that is repairing them. He specialises in tuning the instruments of Sebastien Erard, a revolutionary French piano-maker whose ivories were tickled by the likes of Napoleon, Hadyn and Beethoven.

Drake says that "beauty is found in order, in rules" and believes, quite rightly, there is no sound more beautiful than Bach. However, when he receives a letter from the War Office in October 1886, asking if he would be prepared to go to Burma to tune an 1840 Erard grand, Drake jumps at the chance to leave his well-regulated life and devoted wife in foggy, road-clogged London.

A midlife crisis is an odd subject for a 26-year-old medic to choose to explore in his first novel. At 41, Drake is apparently happily trapped in a childless marriage, but no matter where he is - searching for a cab in Pall Mall or on a tiger hunt outside Rangoon - the sight of street urchins has him fishing in his pocket for cash.

He is "one of the kind of men who has dreams, but tells no one"; he is "looking for something" and hopes to find it in the far-flung Shan States, where Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, the owner of the Erard, is successfully protecting the British Empire from restless natives and French invaders.

The Piano Tuner has 348 pages, yet Drake does not meet the good doctor until 182 of them have been turned. As for the piano, he does not get his hands on it for another 35. Clearly, it is the journey that counts and the reader knows from an early stage that it will end in disaster. Unfortunately, this doom-laden atmosphere does not prevent the pace from flagging.

What starts out like a Conradian foray into the heart of darkness loses its way in JG Farrell territory: there is less horror and more local colour. Drake, whose glasses are forever steaming up in the jungle humidity, finds his notion of "duty" - the concept that keeps Conradian man together - becoming ever more "elusive".

He gets lost, becomes the instrument of more skilful players in the political game and, in the exciting final flurry of the story, goes to pieces spectacularly.

The most skilful player of all is Carroll. A modern Renaissance man - who can reputedly subdue a gang of murderous dacoits with a flute - he introduces Drake to the exotic flora and fauna that surrounds his fort in Mae Lwin.

Butterflies flutter by in the cinnamon-scented air. Moon-eyed honeys smile seductively. No wonder the wooed mechanical does not want to leave his Shangri-la.

The disquisitions on Burmese street theatre, Shan myths, British foreign policy and French pianos are interesting rather than riveting. They make The Piano Tuner a novel in which the background looms larger than the characters. Drake is so passive that it is hard to care what happens to him.