‘A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.’

So wrote one of my favourite writers, the 19th-century French novelist Stendhal.

In all of my romance novels, hope is essential, for how can one fall in love without being hopeful of a bright future? But it is in my latest novel, Concerto, that I have made hope a central theme.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘hope’ as follows:

A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.

Grounds for believing that something good may happen.

The antonym of hope is despair, and that is exactly what the hero of Concerto is experiencing. Once, Umberto Monteverdi was full of ambition and self-confidence; if anything, he was bordering on arrogant. The world was at the feet of the young pianist composer and he saw nothing ahead for himself but more success and adulation for his musical talent.

But then, he saw nothing ahead. At all. Because an accident left him blind.

Umberto was plunged into blackness, not just literally but emotionally. When it became apparent that he would not recover his sight, he lost all hope in life itself; his black despair drove him to attempt suicide.

I am reminded of Langston Hughes’ poem ‘Dreams’:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 

Concerto opens with Umberto’s mother desperately asking music therapist Catriona Drouot to help. She tells Catriona: ‘You are our last hope.’ She wants Catriona to bring Umberto back to composing, which she feels passionately is his reason for being.

But it is not just Umberto’s music that he needs to recover; it is his fundamental ability to connect, to feel pleasure, to feel any hope at all for the future. Without hope, he cannot possibly compose again. Without hope, he cannot possibly love life or himself or others.

Yet as Stendhal wrote, only a very small degree of hope is needed to spark love. Can Catriona gently guide Umberto to make tiny steps forward? To challenge his idea that his blindness has ruined his life forever? To discover that he is more than his disability – that he can still dream, still compose… still love?

Desmond Tutu, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, defined hope as ‘being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness’. Umberto is in darkness, and that is tragic. But if only he could come to see that the light exists still, it can inspire and guide him.