Country United Kingdom Publication date 2001 Pages 306 Originally published 2001 Page count 306 | Language English Media type Print ISBN 978-0-7011-7277-0 Publisher Chatto & Windus | |
 | ||
Similar Choosing Spectacles, Our Horses in Egypt, Is Beauty Good, Dreaming of dead people | ||
Hound Music by English author Rosalind Belben has been described by The Atlantic Companion to Literature as a 'fine historical novel. Published in 2001 by Chatto and Windus it is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in rural England and concerns fox-hunting.
Contents
Plot introduction
George Lupus is Master of Quarr Hunt and his four children also love the thrill of the hunt, but their passion is not shared by Dorothy, wife and mother. On George's untimely death, Dorothy attempts to disband the hunt, but she does not reckon on the determination of her children to maintain the tradition...
Reception
Reviews differ widely, Spectator opined, 'A subtle, brilliant and paradoxical novel... No one has ever written better than she does here about the English upper-class cult of fox-hunting pre-1914...'. and The Telegraph was similarly effusive, 'It is a beautiful, resonant book about a hidden world... The charm of this strange, haunting novel lies in her extraordinary ability not merely to describe, but to convey the very texture of whatever she is writing about...She inhabits not just human skins but those of horse, hound and fox. At times she even contrives to become the landscape across which all these creatures enact their drama of pursuit.' and concludes 'It is a piece of virtuosity that should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand hunting, rather than merely hold a prejudice about it.' In start contrast, Alfred Hicklin in The Guardian complains 'what strikes you most about Rosalind Belben's evocation of early 20th- century countryfolk is her cacophonously awful prose. She frequently lapses into incomprehensible rural jargon - one chapter is bafflingly entitled "Breaking off and the Poultry-Fund Certifier". I had begun to hope that it was a Stella Gibbons-style parody, but the stoic humourlessness suggests she might be in earnest.'
Sequel
Characters from Hound Music appear in Belben's next novel Our Horses in Egypt set twenty years later.