Michael

In the year leading up to World War I, Michael Comber, the homely, awkward son of the earl of Ashbridge, defies his conventional and stuffy father to take up the serious study of music. He befriends Sylvia and Hermann Falbe, two half-German siblings, a famed singer and her brother and accompanist, from whom he takes piano lessons, and begins to live an independent life. But ultimately the war threatens everything. A very potent and absorbing novel.