Reviews for Performance Book in Tune with Music: Bk.2

The average rating for Performance Book in Tune with Music: Bk.2 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-22 00:00:00 Jhone Linas This work of non-fiction, a compilation of diary entries from Charles Ritchie's life as a teenager and a young student in Oxford, records his years growing up in Halifax while giving us a picture of life in Canada (and as a Canadian) in the early 20's. The book was much wittier than I expected, falling somewhere between the forecasting of a memoir with all the narrative direction one would expect from such an endeavor, a slice of life, and the sporadic, spontaneous inner musings of a young mind figuring out family, friends, romance and coming of age. in this developing space along the Eastern shores of the Canadian maritime Province. It's unintentionally witty as well, seeing his time and place as if he was writing from the future, reflecting on the kind of idiosyncrasies one might pick up only in hindsight. It's quite clever in that way, and often funny as you see him responding to his religious environment, some strange friends, and awkward love interests. Broken into two parts, his time growing up in Halfax, and his time attending school in London, this hit the spot for me as I was looking for something with a particular Canadian flavor. This was written a good deal ago, first published a bit more recently, but still works as an enjoyable peek into a bit of Canadiana (he would eventually go on to be a Canadian diplomat in London). It has an appetite for life for sure.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-09-07 00:00:00 Rebecca Carroll Charming Canadiana. The first half of the book, set in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the mid-1920s, reads as if it were written by a minor male character (an ineffectual teenager) in the "Anne of Green Gables" books. The second half of the book follows the same "character" across the ocean to England, to college days in Oxford, where he now takes on the mannerisms of an undergraduate in an early Evelyn Waugh novel.