Author(s): Peter Salmon

Historical

In 1922 Percy Grainger was the most famous musician in the world, a pioneer of the recording age who celebrated his wedding at the Hollywood Bowl in front of 20,000 people. When his mother committed suicide, jumping from a New York skyscraper, it made the front page of the New York Times.

Blue Roses is a story of obsessive love, of grand ambition and grand failure, celebrating the life of the virtuoso pianist and avant-garde composer: an artist who pushed against every boundary, until he lost everything.

Peter Salmon charts Grainger's fall from celebrity and success, through artistic and sexual obsession, toward the figure of tragedy he became, railing against a world that had forgotten him. Told in a series of narrative voices, particularly that of his mother, this is a brilliant fictional re-imagining of the life of one of the Australia's most fascinating and enduring artists.