THE TRAVELING HORNPLAYER

by Barbara Trapido ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1999

Trapido blithely analyzes her people’s sometimes disastrous comings and goings in a bittersweet, often very sexy romance...

Mischievous social comedy and subtle portrayals of characters simultaneously thrown together and isolated by their own solipsism—all in an enchanting fifth novel from the South African-born English author ( Temples of Delight , 1991, etc.)

Three narrators alternate their separate stories of several families and sets of friends who variously recapitulate the romantic spirit embodied by 18-year-old Lydia Dent, killed in a car accident en route to a meeting with novelist Jonathan Goldman, with whom she shared an interest in minor German Romantic poet Wilhelm Muller (the source of Trapido’s title). Lydia’s older sister, Ellen, recalls the idyllic, willfully eccentric girlhood the siblings spent gently mocking their indulgent father and his businesslike second wife ("the Stepmother"). Jonathan himself recounts the mixed blessings of his wife Katherine’s mastery of conventional domesticity and parenting, the hair-raising rearing of their sickly, temperamental daughter, Stella (nicknamed “The Nuisance Chip” . . . “as if [she were] programmed for maximum nuisance capacity”), and his difficult relationship with his mistress, Sonia, a confident college administrator. The story’s third narrator is Stella, a pale “orange-haired” beauty and promising cellist who studies at Edinburgh University (around which the majority of Trapido’s characters gather), where she unwisely takes up with working-class Scots painter “Izzy” Tench, gets pregnant (with complications), and enters a companionable if loveless marriage with Peregrine “Pen” Massingham, a gentler breed of Scotsman who has his own reasons for being “sexually unfathomable.” The ensuing romantic and sexual complications are worked out with almost Shakespearean finesse and unpredictability (Ellen, for example, pairs up with Jonathan’s ridiculously handsome brother, Roger, “a disobliging nutcase with a set of unlikeable habits”).

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-670-88357-3

Page Count: 245

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998

GENERAL FICTION

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TEMPLES OF DELIGHT

BOOK REVIEW

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PERSPECTIVES

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen ) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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by J.D. Salinger

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APPRECIATIONS

MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah ( The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

More by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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Barbara Trapido

The Travelling Hornplayer Hardcover – 2 April 1998

Purchase options and add-ons.

  • Print length 256 pages
  • Language English
  • Publisher Hamish Hamilton
  • Publication date 2 April 1998
  • Dimensions 16.2 x 2.5 x 24.3 cm
  • ISBN-10 0241136946
  • ISBN-13 978-0241136942
  • See all details

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Brother of the More Famous Jack: BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

Product description

Amazon review.

Starring an array of attractive eccentrics, riven with elegant coincidence, and culminating in an utterly theatrical denouement, Trapido's fable of love and loss, families and loneliness, sex and religion, is romantic as Schubert, clever as an Oxford mathematician and heartbreaking as anything. -- Lisa Gee

About the Author

Product details.

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hamish Hamilton; First Edition (2 April 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241136946
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241136942
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 2.5 x 24.3 cm
  • 68,454 in Travel & Tourism (Books)
  • 94,581 in Literary Fiction (Books)
  • 97,693 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

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COMMENTS

  1. The Travelling Hornplayer: a novel

    Barbara Trapido's golden novel about loss is an Alice in Wonderland for grownups. From its haunting start--"Early on in the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister"--to its final, endless irony, The Travelling Hornplayer zips with plot twists and character turns, shocking revelations and desperate reactions. Any attempt at summary is dizzying, but here are a few hints: for ...

  2. The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido

    The Travelling Hornplayer Barbara Trapido 1998 4/5 This was fun, a bit confusing at times because there's a lot going on and there's a few characters whose names begin with S -Stella, Sonia, Sally-, but fun. It reminded me of those American novels that just zig zag all over the place, except that this one is set in England with short excursions ...

  3. The Travelling Hornplayer

    The Travelling Hornplayer - Kindle edition by Trapido, Barbara. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Travelling Hornplayer.

  4. The Travelling Hornplayer: Trapido, Barbara: 9780140281903: Amazon.com

    Barbara Trapido's golden novel about loss is an Alice in Wonderland for grownups. From its haunting start--"Early on in the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister"--to its final, endless irony, The Travelling Hornplayer zips with plot twists and character turns, shocking revelations and desperate reactions. Any attempt at summary is dizzying, but here are a few hints: for ...

  5. The Travelling Hornplayer: a novel: Barbara Trapido: Bloomsbury USA

    Along with eccentric professors, wicked monks, and the titular travelling hornplayer, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale. ... Barbara Trapido is the author of seven novels incl… Reviews. The brilliant [Trapido] . . . is one of the better-kept secrets of contemporary letters . . . [She] is a great novelist; sooner or later the whole ...

  6. The Travelling Hornplayer

    The Travelling Hornplayer. When Ellen Dent's sister, Lydia, is knocked down by a car outside Jonathan Goldman's London flat, her death has far-reaching and entirely unexpected consequences. Jonathan, for instance, is on a train at the time, travelling toward his wife and house in the country. An admired novelist, he has just said good-bye to ...

  7. The Travelling Hornplayer: : Barbara Trapido: Bloomsbury Paperbacks

    Barbara Trapido is the author of seven novels incl…. Pungent with life, with wit, love yearning and grief, The Travelling Hornplayer is Barbara Trapido's most entertaining and powerful novel to date. Her fans might be forgiven for thinking this writer couldn't get any better. She just has. Murdochian entertainment: a tragicomedy of errors.

  8. The Travelling Hornplayer: Amazon.co.uk: Trapido, Barbara

    The Travelling Hornplayer is typical of Trapido's style and approach. She is particularly good at showing how people's lives are inextricably linked and the reverberations one character's actions can have on so many disparate people. Here, we observe how the tragic death of 17-year-old Lydia Dent impacts on all those who have come into ...

  9. The Travelling Hornplayer

    The Travelling Hornplayer. Barbara Trapido. Bloomsbury USA, Aug 9, 2016 - Fiction - 272 pages. Stunning and difficult, Stella Goldman is programmed for maximum nuisance capacity, but when she discovers both her father's affair and her boyfriend's infidelity on the same day, she flees into the arms of kindly Pen, who speaks as though he's ...

  10. The Travelling Hornplayer Kindle Edition

    As Trapido's myriad pairings collide, part, and then reunite in breathtaking comedy of manners, The Travelling Hornplayer climaxes in a joyful and unexpected finale. _____ 'Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure' - Independent on Sunday Books of the Year 'This woman is brilliant.

  11. The Travelling Hornplayer : Barbara Trapido : Free Download, Borrow

    The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido. Publication date 1999-01-01 Publisher Penguin Books Collection printdisabled; internetarchivebooks Contributor Internet Archive Language English. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-06-12 04:56:26 Autocrop_version ..15_books-20220331-.2 Boxid IA40975808

  12. Barbara Trapido

    Novelist Barbara Trapido has been delighting readers over a forty year career. In The Travelling Hornplayer (1998) she spins a tale of betrayal, misunderstanding, coincidence and the passions of ...

  13. The Travelling Hornplayer

    The Travelling Hornplayer. By BARBARA TRAPIDO. Read the Review. Ellen. Des Mullers Blumen. Early on the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister. I had not seen her for three years. She came into my bedroom, opening and closing the door without a sound. Her hair was bobbed short and she was dressed in plain white cotton T-shirt ...

  14. THE TRAVELING HORNPLAYER

    the traveling hornplayer by Barbara Trapido ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1999 Mischievous social comedy and subtle portrayals of characters simultaneously thrown together and isolated by their own solipsism—all in an enchanting fifth novel from the South African-born English author ( Temples of Delight , 1991, etc.)

  15. The Travelling Hornplayer: Amazon.co.uk: Trapido, Barbara

    The Travelling Hornplayer is typical of Trapido's style and approach. She is particularly good at showing how people's lives are inextricably linked and the reverberations one character's actions can have on so many disparate people. Here, we observe how the tragic death of 17-year-old Lydia Dent impacts on all those who have come into ...

  16. The Radio 4 Blog

    Wednesday 5 April 2017, 17:00. We heard a ghost story from our author on this month's Bookclub. Barbara Trapido was talking about her novel The Travelling Hornplayer, which begins with the ...

  17. The Travelling Hornplayer: Trapido, Barbara: 9780670883578: Amazon.com

    The Travelling Hornplayer [Trapido, Barbara] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Travelling Hornplayer

  18. The Travelling Hornplayer: Barbara Trapido: 9780140272741: Amazon.com

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  19. The travelling hornplayer : Trapido, Barbara : Free Download, Borrow

    The travelling hornplayer by Trapido, Barbara. Publication date 1999 Topics Traffic accident victims, Sisters, Bereavement, Musicians Publisher New York : Viking Collection printdisabled; internetarchivebooks Contributor Internet Archive Language English. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-09-27 15:37:52 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA152801

  20. The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido

    As Trapido's myriad pairings collide, part, and then reunite in breathtaking comedy of manners, The Travelling Hornplayer climaxes in a joyful and unexpected finale. _____ 'Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure' - Independent on Sunday Books of the Year 'This woman is brilliant. And she actually makes you laugh …

  21. The Travelling Hornplayer: Amazon.co.uk: Trapido, Barbara

    Buy The Travelling Hornplayer First Edition by Trapido, Barbara (ISBN: 9780241136942) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. The Travelling Hornplayer: Amazon.co.uk: Trapido, Barbara: 9780241136942: Books

  22. Barbara Trapido

    Barbara (Louise) Trapido (born 1941 as Barbara Schuddeboom), is a British novelist born in South Africa with German, Danish and Dutch ancestry. Born in Cape Town and growing up in Durban she studied at the University of Natal gaining a BA in 1963 before emigrating to London. After many years teaching, she became a full-time writer in 1970. Trapido has published seven novels, three of which ...

  23. The Travelling Hornplayer: : Barbara Trapido: Bloomsbury Paperbacks

    Selected as a Radio 4 Good Read by Maggie O'Farrell_____'Sprinkled with magic' - Sunday Times 'Audacious, energetic and dazzing … There aren't…