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A mesmerizing debut novel about a concert pianist who fears he is losing his mindMr. Field wants a new life, a life cleansed of the old one's disappointments. A concert pianist on the London scene, his career is upended when the train he is travelling on crashes into the wall at the end of a tunnel. The accident splinters his left wrist, jeopardizing his musical ambitions. On a whim, he uses his compensation pay-out to buy a house he has seen only once in a newspaper photograph, a replica of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye on a stretch of coast outside Cape Town. Together with his wife, Mim, Mr. Field sets out in the hope that the house will make him happier, or at least less unhappy. But as time passes, the house - which Le Corbusier designed as "a machine for living" - begins to have a disturbing effect on Mr.