title: Beethoven's Assassins by: Crumey, Andrew published: 2023-03-17 read: 2023-08 preview

I’ve always liked van Beethoven’s music. Now, knowing it (almost) all, and perhaps understanding his artistic development a bit, I don’t go back to it very often, but when I do, it’s relaxing and inspiring.

And thus I expected the same of this book. Its main character is a novelist, who was asked to write an article about “Beethoven and Philosophy”. Covid comes; he struggles with his dementing father and his mother’s death. In a second storyline, playing after the pandemic, he goes to a writing retreat in a Scottish country house where he rubs against other people and some mysteries there, while trying to continue writing the article. There are other storylines set in the same house at different times. For instance, in 1823 the house is owned by a retired colonel connected to the masonic lodge who commissioned “the opera”. In 1923, the house is a psychiatric hospital visited by J.W.N. Sullivan, who in real life was an expert on Beethoven and physics. Sullivan investigates a woman able to recall past lives, and learns about the opera.

And then there is Therese van Beethoven, Ludwig’s sister-in-law who complains about the old deaf sod, and takes care of him in his final hours. Giving a believable picture of how “this old sod” really lived and died.

But… “The opera”? Which opera? Well, that is the central thing in this book: the Beethoven opera about the Order of Assassins, titled “The Assassins, or Everything is Allowed”. We know, of course, that the opera never came to be. But the book at least finds the libretto, and some mysteries around it.

The book is highly amusing, I found. Probably since I recognised some things. It’s also non-consequential, since that opera… it really did not exist. I heard before that, having written only one opera was a pain for Beethoven – and indeed, one with a libretto which does not live up to the music.

But still, I enjoyed the stories in the book, combining suspense, history, and personal stories in one.