TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Books of the Year, 2022
FINANCIAL TIMES Best Summer Books, 2022
PRESTO MUSIC Book of the Year, 2022
“Ferociously thrilling and uncommonly beautiful” Clemency Burton-Hill
“A pitch-perfect journey through Scandinavia” Mariella Frostrup
“The best kind of music book…one that makes it the heart and soul of something infinitely wider and more fascinating” Gramophone (Richard Bratby)
“Brings together, with a discoverer’s verve and an expert’s attentive accuracy, the paradox behind the Nordic countries’ artistic achievements” TLS Books of 2022 (Paul Binding)
“An extraordinary achievement…a breathing of the personal (in) and the political (out), of insularity and extroversion, of contemplation and conversation, of rhyme and reportage” Limelight (Will Yeoman)
“Engaging, informative and as unstuffy as the cultures it describes” BBC Music Magazine (Steph Power)
“Treasures at every turn” Víkingur Ólafsson
“You are in fantastic company with Mellor…his insights are gifted and his connecting of music, culture, mentality, history and politics is simply unmatched” Klassisk Magazine (Mikkel Thrane Lassen)
“A compelling take on music and its place in society…deserves to be read by anyone interested or involved in the arts today” The Quarterly Review (Stuart Millson)
“A splendidly ambitious book…a landmark in interdisciplinary and musicological literature, a model for other authors” CoScan Magazine (Colin Roth)
“What I love most is how [Mellor] writes about music…Sibelius is almost always with us” Songlines (Fiona Talkington)
“Reporting equally from airports and ferries as remote forests and state of the art opera houses, Mellor is excellent company…The Northern Silence is a loving, critical and enjoyable survey of a unique musical landscape” The Wire (Tim Rutherford-Johnson)
“Admirably informative and full of sharp analyses, The Northern Silence also enthrals the reader” Anglo-Norse Review (Paul Binding)
“Nordic readers may view themselves just a bit differently on the map after reading this” Finnish Music Quarterly (Lasse Lehtonen)
“An excellent book trying to understand the Nordic countries through the lens of music, architecture and the arts. A good study of social capital, in addition to everything else” Tyler Cowen
“Musical content is skilfully interwoven with historical, cultural, societal, architectural, topographical and political connections…above all, an informative and entertaining read” The Strad (Robin Stowell)
“A superbly presented and perspective-rich book” publimus.dk (Valdemar Lønsted)
“Stylishly presented, this absorbing read says a great deal for Mellor’s breadth of outlook and his depth of sympathies” Arcana (Richard Whitehouse)
“Fresh energy is constantly brought to the pages of the book courtesy of the mini-interviews…all of [which] help take the pulse of Nordic music culture in the twenty-first century” Seismograf (Henrik Marstal)