Hilary Mantel on Orpheus, Eurydice & Ghosts...

"Often, when people have been bereaved, their friends warn them to let a year go by before they listen to music, knowing how it can break down the barrier we carefully erect between ourselves and the recently dead, and unleash a flood of pain and regret. But it is hard now to avoid music. In a way that Monteverdi could never have imagined, it is in the air around us, sometimes degraded into an annoying background jangle, sometimes blanked out and ignored, but always capable of catching us unawares, infiltrating our self-protection, and making the dead walk..."