Daniel Ducrou’s first novel covers much territory, emotional and otherwise. Ducrou maintains a pace that suits the subject matter and the lives of his characters. The action sequences are well constructed, and the exhilarating and occasionally violent nature of this milieu is plausibly rendered. But the characters themselves can be unsatisfying: their motives and histories are not always convincing, and nor are all of their interactions. The emotional pull of past and present events feels less powerful for the reader than it might, given the book’s thematic concerns and interpersonal emphasis.

Descriptive elements give a strong sense of the locations, in Byron and elsewhere, without getting in the way of the action, though some potent scenes lack detail and would have benefited from more space. Live music has an important place here, and Ducrou offers a promising metaphorical vocabulary to represent this; it is used sparingly enough to remain evocative rather than distracting. It is also to the author’s credit that the dénouement takes the direction it does. The Byron Journals has already received shortlisting for several prizes as an unpublished manuscript. Though not fully realised, it is a promising first novel.