I enjoyed reading this book. There are some marvellous descriptive passages of the English piano tuner's first impressions of Burma in the late 1800s, both the city and the back county. Very evocative. As you read though, there are some small annoyances, some little niggling points around the development of the storyline. After, you realize some of the main turning points and significant unfolding events are basically delivered in one line. The one that jumps out the most is the sentence that states the piano tuner has been in the piano village for three months - as you read, you have no sense of the passage of this time. Other foreshadowings are also crudely done in one sentence earlier in the book. They seem odd at the time, stand out a bit as sentences or ideas, and you only realize later where they were heading. A bit awkward...
I also wondered why the author was revisiting this particular moment of long-past British colonialism, and it doesn't really become clear, beyond the usual remarking of the blindness of the colonizer to the local culture, environment and even the people as humans.
There is also a funny parallel to Heart of Darkness, both in the outcome and in the rivier journey. Not sure if it is annoying or not - tend towards annoying as I don't see any critical or insightful thoughts emerging from this parallel.
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