The Café Ecstasy

Sydney, Australia, 1980. Heady days. The era of the Free Long Lunch and Bottom-of-the-Harbour schemes. Optimism and joie de vivre. The Lucky Country is still something of an outpost.Lars List is a young piano tuner from Sweden, a loner, an unconventional conventionalist, a fashion tragic; awkward with women, a bit of a philosopher. He visits his customers in their own homes, tuning their instruments to perfection when it is really the people themselves who need tuning.Lars List is all about what is missing in people’s lives. In his own existence, a chopped-off finger has condemned him to be a piano tuner, not a pianist. Another incomplete piece of baggage is his dead mother, whose ashes he continues to scatter in places he deems significant.Jenny is a new customer with an old second-hand piano. While she makes Lars feel as awkward as deliciously attracted, the piano intimidates him. It is a big, ugly behemoth that reeks of a disreputable past. By chance, the pair stumble upon the place where the ponderous upright came the grotty, sad, sleazy, dark and dingy Café Ecstasy, an erstwhile House of Ill Repute, hidden away in a back alley in one of Sydney’s least salubrious parts.The pair hatch a plan to bring the hulking monstrosity back to where it belongs, and once again bring on the Music.