It goes without saying that Chekhov’s short stories are far more meticulously made than they appear. Brodie is swiftly drawn into Kilbarron’s orbit, which includes his mistress, the beautiful would-be opera singer, Lydia “Lika” Blum, and his sinister, cheroot-smoking brother, Malachi. One couldn’t avoid the fact that it was probably not going to end well for poor old Brodie and his rotten lungs.

There are a few more further twists before this book reaches it's tragic conclusion which was unbearably sad.A particular highlight for me was Boyd's skill in making the era come alive with his rich vibrant descriptions. Perhaps he is regarded somehow as too “traditional” – well-crafted novels with a story, a plot, sound characterisation and a beginning, middle and end.

This is a beautifully written and structured story of the life of the young Scottish Brodie Moncur, afflicted with health issues, employed at the Channon Piano Company in Edinburgh, when he is offered the opportunity to work in their Paris outlet which he fervently grasps with both hands. From Edinburgh, he’s dispatched to the Channon showroom in Paris, where he dreams up the idea of paying a virtuoso to endorse the firm’s pianos, and strikes a deal with the 40-something John Kilbarron, an Irish concert pianist with a declining but still bankable reputation. Lika and Brodie undertake a 'hidden in plain sight' love affair in Paris that blooms into a dangerous liaison when the small entourage moves to St Petersburg.I read Any Human Heart when it came out in 2002 and, like hundreds of thousands, loved it immediately. It’s a finely judged performance: a deft and resonant alchemy of fact and fiction, of literary myth and imagination. You really get to know and believe in his characters, envisage the places they visit, and in this period piece, feel you are in the late 19th/early 20th Century. Boyd delineates Brodie's relationship through the years, his travels, the dangers, a man that gambles with his own system.

I wasn’t quite sure about his weird and dysfunctional family (especially his repulsive father) other than as a device to get him to leave Scotland and stay away.

There is nothing revolutionary in William Boyd’s style but it’s always a great pleasure to read his retro novels. He has written several novels which I have loved, all of which share a similar characteristic which is that he takes you through decades of a character's life and gets you to care so deeply for that character and to become so enthralled by his/her story that you almost believe this character to be real. Like the inner workings of a finely-tuned piano, the harmony of William Boyd’s Love is Blind is the work of true craftsmanship that is sensed more than outwardly observed. A collection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled Bamboo, was published in October 2005. Love is Blind is a tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavour and the illusions it creates; of all the possibilities that life can offer, and how cruelly they can be snatched away.