The biography through poetry was wonderful. I liked the way it made me stop and think more than straight text would have done. I loved the way Padel wove her own experiences of discovering Beethoven into the narrative, especially as a fellow viola player.

This is an innovative way of thinking about biography but it didn't always work for me. Padel sketches in Beethoven's life via fragments of biography, letters and his own testament, interspersed with her free verse. She also entwines her own life with his: her upbringing, her relations with music, her research in Beethoven's footsteps. The balance feels pitched towards her which felt a bit narcissistic to me, though I don't think that was the intention. There is also a mini conventional biography of the composer at the end which helps make sense of the names of people dropped into the text.

The big issue is that I didn't like the poetry. It feels forced and laboured, it's packed full of rather cliched conventional romantic imagery of stars and moons ('at night the moon blood-paints the sloping lane'), and at times descends into obscurity: 'he is a midnight beekeeper gathering a swarm' -? Amidst all this, there's a sense of Beethoven's tumultuous life against the backdrop of Napoleon, but not really a sense of music or much detail: this might serve better as a complement to a more traditional 'life' as it skims a surface that I wanted to dive into.