Reviews

this is a difficult one to review. i love jackie kay’s writing and enjoyed a lot of the prose in trumpet, however there was a lot of gratuitous descriptions of characters’ disgust at seeing or even considering joss’ trans body, which left a bad taste. it was disappointing not to hear from joss’ pov at any point.

hollyp20's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

elsiestu's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

hazioli's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

I am deeply disappointed in this book - I felt an echo of what Kay was attempting. I did really enjoy what she described as the 'jazz like' structure and the way memories and letters and articles were interspersed into streams of consciousness from the so many people and sources. And some of the characters did have beautiful development - I loved every bit from Millie's perspective; the way Kay depicted her grief and her love, was beautiful and made clear the extent of love Kay herself must have felt in her life. But while I could sense the motive and potential behind many other characters and the the journey the book followed them through - almost all other perspectives made me feel sick.

This is an important book to have been written, and an amazing (fictional) life to be attempting to capture - and I'm sure much of the depiction, and language, and hate is authentic and true to the mid/late nineties. But it was also so wrong, and so unkind, and did so little justice to the beauty of being transgender - to the beauty inherent in any person's life.

After finishing this book, I was not at all surprised to read (in a 20th anniversary interview at the back of my copy) that Jackie Kay '.. didn't want to rely on research'. Even in that 2016 interview her references to trans people is messy and misinformed. The book doesn't have too glaring a falsity, but it cries out as being written by someone who had not truly connected in any way to the vibrant community she wrote about.
It is clear Kay wanted to tell a story full of heart and soul and humanity in a 'unique' story but she is (in regard to her writing this book) no better than the sensationalist author she depicts, who is so clearly depicted as a bad and person. If you wish to write in such an unbalanced way, depicting far more vile hatred and speculation from other characters, chapter after chapter of graphic transphobia, the least you could do is afford some space to the feelings of the character who is degraded and defiled by their words. This book read like a 300 page 'outing' article carving itself a path that avoids the motives and feelings and life of the transgender person it discusses as much as possible to focus on almost any one else's opinion of him. This could be one massive structural feat to make this point about the journalists books and the transgender position in society - but I don't believe her capable of offering trans people that dignity after reading this.

What gives you, Jackie Kay, who is not transgender, who does not even seem to have had a conversation with a transgender person before writing this - what gives you the right to document my suffering like this?

How cruel it seems, when thought of abstractly, to write one of the first popular novels about a black trans man and to offer so little to his own story and feelings in a time when most people, LGB or not, were more than ready to spew the same filth as the characters of this book.

2.5 stars because Millie's chapters were nonetheless the beautiful and I relished, when I could, in this account of a monumental love and her complete disregard for her husband's secret.

Content Warnings

heath_the_leaf's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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