“We must discover the Music of the Cosmos.”

With these words, visionary, depraved and intensely artistic Gaius piques the curiosity of Sam and his friends, young lads from Kent who have come to Swinging Sixties London in search of musical success.

To further their quest for the otherworldly Music of the Cosmos, the boys leave London for Paris, and experiment with the help of psychotropic drugs designed by a mysterious patron who only Gaius has ever met. While traveling through rural France to escape the madness of that countries May 1968 revolution, events take a turn for the tragic – and the supernatural.

Genre: Historical / supernatural

The Music of the Cosmos, Carole Bulewski’s debut novel is a supernatural delight. Well written, thought-provoking imagery, that will paint glorious psychedelic images in your mind.

The Music of the Cosmos will play on in your head long after you’ve finished it.

My Review

My first observation is that the young friends from Kent are so young. They leave school and go to London when they are sixteen. They make music, write songs, and try to earn a living. I went to the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969 with two friends when I was sixteen and thought that was outrageously adventurous.

Then Sam (our first person narrator) meets mixed-race Alfie, who also joins the band. Life is strange, fun and they are so independent. Until they meet Gaius, who is very wealthy and holds drug fuelled orgies at his house. He is obsessed with The Music of the Cosmos. Of course we know that this is basically music they play when tripping on little yellow pills, similar to LSD I suppose, though I have never done any drugs stronger than a couple of joints in my late teens. I was always too scared.

This wouldn’t normally be the type of book I would read, but it’s beautifully written and Sam is so endearing, as is his best friend Joe to whom he is recounting the tragic events that occurred forty-five years ago after Joe left the band to pursue his love of journalism.

Apart from Gaius, other people appear in their lives, like Martin, who is a friend of Gaius and is in his twenties, and seems to be the steadying influence in the band. In Paris we meet Daniel, with whom Sam spends a lot of time.

The second part of the book is set during the protests and strikes in France in May 1968. The band are left stranded when they run out of petrol on their way to Spain and have to stay at a supposedly haunted house. This is where the book turns sinister and terrifying, with a touch of the supernatural.

The Music of the Cosmos is both original and unique, maybe not a standard modern genre, but something akin to “Psychedelic Literature: A specific movement focused on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and the resulting altered states of consciousness, often with philosophical or spiritual interpretations.” It certainly made for an interesting read.

Many thanks to Hygge Book Tours for inviting me to be part of the #blogtour

About the Author

Born and raised in the south of France, Carole Bulewski moved to the UK at the end of the second Millennium, eventually settling down in London after a few years in the South West of England, a place that has inspired her many a supernatural story since – writing first in her native French, but now almost exclusively in the English language.

Although writing has always been Carole’s preferred means of expressing herself, having written her first fairy tale at the tender age of seven, music in one form or another plays an important part in her life, and consequently in her writing. For not only do musicians make great characters in supernatural and horror stories, but they also have the ability to conjure up a parallel universe where different rules apply.

In her writing, Carole explores how the supernatural can creep into the most mundane of situations. The Music of the Cosmos, her first novel in the English language, takes the reader on a journey through the extraordinary era that were the late Sixties, from Kent to Swinging London, the Paris of May 1968 and southern France, from the perspective of a musician whose use of chemical substances might have altered his perception of reality. The Music of the Cosmos was published in February 2018.

Since then, Carole has been working on a trilogy, the Queen’s Park trilogy, the first instalment of which, The Piper and The Fairy, was released in 2020. The two following novels, Water of Life and The Little God of Queen’s Park, were released in 2021. 

Carole is also a member of urban baroque group Firefay.

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