Near the beginning of A Greater Music, the narrator, a young Korean writer, falls into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she''s been house-sitting for her on-off boyfriend Joachim.

This sets into motion a series of memories that move between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she first lived in Berlin.

Throughout, the narrator''s relationship with Joachim, a rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with M, an ultra-refined music-loving German teacher, whom, it is suggested, later became her lesbian lover.