Nadia Beard''s decision to study piano, years after she had stopped playing as a teenager, sees her uprooting her life to return to a passion and wondering how she had ever let it go. Many, if not most, set aside the pursuits of their youth - be it in music, sport or art - once the reality of working life sets in, leaving the joys and skills of those days far in their slipstream. The Melody of Things depicts what coming back to that early love entails. In this stirring reflection on the joys - and difficulties - of reconnecting with the forgotten pursuits of youth, Beard embarks on a year studying piano, exploring the pleasures, frustrations and revelations of re-dedicating herself to the instrument as an amateur. Her story is an invitation: to seek out the restorative power waiting to be discovered in the pieces of ourselves we have, perhaps unknowingly, lost to time.

Autorentext
Nadia Beard is a journalist, critic and pianist. Her writing on art, books, culture and politics appear regularly in the Financial Times, New Yorker, National Geographic, Guardian, Economist and Times Literary Supplement, among others.