Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Summer Holiday Reading for the reading group.

Jackie Kay is a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and short-story writer. Trumpet is a modern classic of enduring love, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret.

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners – mother, son and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own.
But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.