50books_poc | Trumpet and Wish I was Here, Jackie Kay, 5 and 6/50 (Reply)

Trumpet is about Joss Moody, a jazz trumpeter with a Scottish mother and a black father, who has just died at the beginning of the book; after his death, the public discover that Joss was biologically female, although he lived most of his life as a man. It’s told through a number of points of view, but mainly Joss’s widow, Millie, who knew, their adopted son Colman, who didn’t, and Sophie Stones, a journalist who wants to write a book about Joss, and will use any connection she can get to do so.

It’s well written and compelling, and Millie’s grief is particularly effective – we see Joss through many different points of view, but it’s his loss that Millie is dealing with as much as his presence, and I thought this worked really well. Colman, also, starts off as petty and whining but develops – although it’s hard to tell whether he’s changing as much as it is that as the reader you get to know him better, and see his actions in a broader light. There are a lot of really nice side moments as well, and even the fact that I’m really not a jazz fan did not stop the music bits of this from being interesting.

Wish I was Here. This is a short story collection, and I didn’t like it as much – mostly, because I prefer novels, but also because although the stories are well written and the characters are interesting I didn’t really go on thinking about them after I’d finished, which I did with Trumpet. All the stories seem to be about characters who become more themselves; the possible exception is the last story, The Mirrored Twins. Which I liked, but previous exposure to multiple novels featuring homosexual characters who were Inevitably Doomed meant that I suffered vast amounts of anticipatory anxiety reading about a happy gay couple climbing a very steep Scottish mountain with inadequate safety equipment in increasing fog, and had trouble getting back to the actual story.

Both these books have been reviewed here before - the reviews of Trumpet made me seek it out, and I'm glad I did. While I was trying to track it down I ran across Wish I was Here as well, which I liked - not as much as Trumpet, but I'm more of a novel person in most circumstances.