Trumpet - Softcover

WINNER OF THE 1998 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE " It has a humanity and sympathy which engaged me from start to finish. And its energy and directness made it a treat to read. . . . [Trumpet makes] us see that people apparently very unlike ourselves are in fact very much like ourselves. . . . Love is not usually such a triumphant idea in modern writing, but I think Jackie Kay makes it believably and vividly so." -- Ian Jack, "Granta" " Kay spins a love story, a fairy tale, and a psychological thriller out of one deep secret. She has a great gift for delving inside sundry souls, making poetry of their quirks. At its best, her prose ripples like jazz and brims with exquisite insights." -- Andrea Ashworth, author of Once in a House on Fire " Jackie Kay makes the unbelievable gloriously real. For a first novel this is remarkably assured, full of melody and tension. Each character is given a singing part, bouncing notes and harmonies off each other as Joss's story is teasingly, movingly revealed. ...Trumpet is a love story and a lament, beautifully told." -- Eithne Farry, "Time Out" " A hypnotic story...about the walls between what is known and what is secret--. Spare, haunting, dreamlike." ---"Time" " Splendid...[Kay's] imaginative leaps in story and language will remind some readers of a masterful jazz solo." ---"The San Francisco Chronicle"

The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret. Unbeknown to all but his wife Millie, Joss was a woman living as a man. The discovery is most devastating for their adopted son, Colman, whose bewildered fury brings the press to the doorstep and sends his grieving mother to the sanctuary of a remote Scottish village. A novel about the lengths to which people will go for love, Trumpet is a moving story of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, of loving deception and lasting devotion, and of the intimate workings of the human heart. `Jackie Kay makes the unbelievable gloriously real. Trumpet is a love story and a lament, beautifully told' Time Out `The voices in this tender, compassionate work were still singing in my head a couple of weeks after I'd finished it' Observer `This book is all about love . . . The qualities of sympathy and tenderness in the novel make it special and make Kay a writer to respect' Guardian