Prelude

Prelude was a beautiful and heartbreaking story. It really tried to pull my heart out towards the end. While it was a slow start for me, by the end of it I was hooked and didn't want to let go. While other student/teacher relationships in books seem to have one character taking advantage of another I didn't feel that so much in this book. I felt like they were on equal footing and were really there for each other. I never saw India as a predator and I found their relationship rather sweet. It actually seemed to me that Kim was stronger than India, I guess you could say in that way she used him, to prop herself up but it worked for me. I thought the choice to use music as a way to connect them (student to teacher) added a beautiful theme to the story. I loved how the story was told, with Kim looked back on the events from 25 years later. It was nice having his reflections rather then just being in the moment with him. I also liked how upfront we know that this love doesn't last. And that Kim was able to admit that his own jealousy and paranoia helped end their relationship. Overall I thought this was a beautifully told story that shows how one summer can change your life forever!

Set in 1982 as the Falklands War rages, this deeply sensual novel is a homage to adolescent love and the folly of a schoolboy. Kim, a seventeen year old Eton student suddenly finds his first love and his life changing virtually overnight. The hallowed halls of Eton College are indeed awash in silvery light where a seething cauldron exists of pubescent boys and humming testosterone. Even as a middle-aged Kim looks back in his college days, reminiscing on his first great love, he tries to come to terms with his feelings that summer. All the thoughts of the Falklands War are suddenly erased from Kim's mind when he sees a beautiful young fantasy woman in her early 20's gliding out of the huge doors of the Eton School Hall: "She's the most perfect woman I'd ever seen." Signed up to study piano, it is in the music room where the sound of Bach''s Well-Tempered Clavier, and his meeting with India James that the new sensations of lust explode in Kim's mind. Doggedly pursuing the older India who is without a doubt the most astounding and extraordinary thing to enter his life, all Kim can do is what it wonder as she flicks through the thick volumes of music books. It is Bach's forty-eight preludes and in particular The Well-Tempered Clavier that holds Kim spellbound and unable to move. Living at Eton to escape the unhappiness of her life in London, India is charmed and overwhelmed by Kim who is unrelenting in his passion. Almost overnight he falls in love with the pianist who seems to have been "touched by God," but even as he fanatically practices his preludes inspired by the love of his new muse, he continues to battle with the expectations of his military father and the dark hints of the possibilities of life with his girlfriend Estelle. Caught up in the exuberant passion of adolescence, Kim seems to view his life through the lens of femininity, an emotional iceberg that is at the same time riddled with an insane jealously, obsessed with the idea of women in general and of girls in particular. And as the hot and sticky summer continues only Kim can find solace in the violent love-making, the countryside sex, the midnight assignations at India's rented flat on the outer grounds of Eton, a love that is sandwiched up against the dustbins of a Winsor hotel and in the spinneys and fields surrounding the college. But just as Kim's insolent tongue threatens to him into trouble with Frankie, a fellow-student and arch rival for India`s affections, a catastrophic self-implosion takes place which sets the tone for the second half of Coles' tale. No longer buoyed along by just love and lust, Kim through his own shortsightedness, sows the seeds self-destruction, creating a fertile breeding ground for his incipient jealousy. Caught between the love of Estelle and the lustful orbit of India, Kim effortlessly transfers his allegiance from one to the other and back again without a moments hesitation. But then a second blow awaits - a secret hidden deep in India's ch