I have always steered well clear of fiction books that have to do with the subject of classical music and its performers. They are usually written by non-professional musicians, and as a result, they tend to fawn over the process of making art. Performers are starving, beautiful, and possessed of virtuoso abilities on their instruments. Composers are drawn as all of the above, but with the added character attribute of being really angry at or about something, usually the performers. It’s not that we professional musicians don’t sit around and talk about what a great piece Beethoven’s Ninth is, but after you’ve played it a dozen times, you move on to other topics of conversation. Now, I’m not above reading fictional accounts of other sorts of artists, but I am not intimately acquainted with their means of expression, and so accepting some artistic license in the storytelling doesn’t bother me so much.