Trumpet

Description

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE

With an introduction by 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.

Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, Trumpet 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.

PRAISE FOR TRUMPET

“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 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

Author Information

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. She has published two collections of stories with Picador: Why Don’t You Stop Talking and Wish I Was Here; a memoir, Red Dust Road; and a collection of poems, Fiere. She teaches at Newcastle University, and lives in Manchester.