To add to my previous lack of enthusiasm for Christopher Miller's novel
Simon Silber:

I just remembered I took the trouble to review it on amazon.com.  I wrote
the following:

   I'm a classical-music freak, so the idea of a dotty composer
   and his equally-dotty biographer appealed to me right away.
   However, to me the book is a rehash of Nabokov, at a level
   you'd find in a creative-writing seminar from a well-read,
   though not particularly gifted student. There's nothing
   obviously wrong with it, but nothing obviously right, either.
   In fact, I found it pretentious, rather than stimulating. The
   idea of a hero who tries to construct his life as he would
   create a piece of art Nabokov did a lot better, possibly
   because Nabokov understands the tragedy of the situation and
   finds something worthy in his ridiculous heroes.  As I read
   Miller, I found myself asking, "Why don't you pick on somebody
   your own size?" Miller's humor -- and, by the way, he tends
   to explain his better jokes, as if he doesn't trust the reader
   to get them -- struck me as small-minded, mean-spirited, and,
   worst of all, precious.

I should add that most readers on amazon.com disagree with me.

Steve Schwartz