SOURCE: King, Francis. “Harmony Triumphantly Achieved.” Spectator 290, no. 9091 (2 November 2002): 61-2.

In the following review, King describes Makine's artistry as displayed in his novel A Life's Music, also known as Music of a Life.

Like most human beings, most novelists are neither outstandingly good nor outstandingly bad. This poses a problem for reviewers. A good novelist can write interestingly about mediocre characters; but even a superlative reviewer may find it difficult to write interestingly about mediocre novels. In consequence, reviewers all too often rush to the extremes of proclaiming a novel either a stinker or a masterpiece. In my own time, reviewers have called Anthony Powell the English Proust and C. P. Snow the English Balzac, and compared Olivia Manning's two wartime trilogies to War and Peace. When, some 50 years ago. I published a novel entitled The Widow, my publisher rang up in a state of rare excitement to...