Trumpet Synopsis
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, Trumpet by Jackie Kay is a starkly beautiful modern classic about the lengths to which people will go for love. It 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.
With an introduction by author Ali Smith.
When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.
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.
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Jackie Kay Press Reviews
Recounted in clear, spare, utterly unsentimental prose . . . the voices in this tender, compassionate work were still singing in my head a couple of weeks after I'd finished it - Observer
The book's style works like a jazz riff, a literary improvisation of the central melody of Joss's death - Independent on Sunday
In an accomplished display of vocal versatility, Kay shifts effortlessly between the voices of Millie, Colman and Sophie Stones, an avaricious journalist who offers to help Colman avenge himself by ghostwriting a bare-all biography . . . the beauty of this book is the way its love, the character and story around which all the others orbit, is kept so intriguingly in the shadows, so fantastically out of view - Literary Review
Kay's powerful rendition of everyday speech combines perfectly with the themes and construction of her story - Independent on Sunday
From the angry and disbelieving voice of the son Colman, whose hurt and alienation can only find expression through the cliches of tabloid expose, to Millie's personal elegy for her husband, Jackie Kay's ear for the poetry as well as for the rudeness of everyday speech is as powerful as ever - Times Literary Supplement
Kay carefully registers the technical difficulties of transgendered life (breast binding, marriage certificates, death certificates) without sensationalizing them, and beautifully evokes both Millie's and Colman's grief. She leaves us with a broad landscape of sweet tolerance and familial love, wondering how it felt to be Joss Moody - New York Times Book Review
Kay is a writer to respect . . . The qualities of sympathy and tenderness in this novel make it special - Guardian
A rich, taut and compelling novel by a fine writer. A Picador classic -- Melvyn Bragg - Guardian
A novel whose humanism, humour and vision demolish anyone's urge to think they've got the right to decide about, categorize or dismiss other human beings -- Ali Smith - New York Times
About Jackie Kay
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. She is a poet, novelist and writer of short stories and has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize and is a modern classic. She has published two collections of stories with Picador, Why Don't You Stop Talking and Wish I Was Here. She teaches at Newcastle University, and lives in Manchester.
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