Emanating from the blackout to move across the water came a desultory flotilla of youth: a saucy and outrageous convoy, unsure of their past, unknowing of their future, aping and japing their way through a reconfiguring world. Amongst them was the author of this officially-requested memoir, whose story - a series of defining relationships, each seemingly prescribed - leaves notions of personal agency forever in question. The Actual Whole of Music is a novel of astonishing power and originality, a reminder that - suspended dust-like and illuminated only in the momentary flash of life - we are relentlessly displaced by forces around, before and after us.
