Travelling Hornplayer

I like books with gradually emerging connections, where the characters are linked over time, sometimes the reader knows more than they do (or can see it coming). 'The Travelling Hornplayer' by Barbara Trapido was just such a book. Her name felt familiar when I found this book but I am not sure why because I have not read anything else by her. 

Catherine and Jonathan's daughter Stella is quite a handful, she has absorbed all their energy ever since she was born. She discovers the cello and leaves for Edinburgh where she takes up with Izzy, her artist housemate. While Catherine lost herself in being a mother to Stella, Jonathan, her writer father, has been having lunches with his sister-in-law and an affair with Sonia. Ellen and Lydia are sisters, Lydia is killed outside Jonathan's London flat, while Ellen reappears as another Edinburgh housemate. We get a little of everyone's back story and a smattering of eccentric relatives, what's not to like. I have been busy with the A to Z so did not get around to the review, so that's all I got.

Here Stella has discovered Izzy has been fucking someone else and she abandons him and returns to Edinburgh. I have fondness for this character because Monkey has a good friend called Peregrine (he is not named in this quote) (and our Perrie is nothing like this one):

" 'Where's Ellen?' Stella says. 'Is she asleep?'

'Ellen's gone,' he says. 'I took her to the airport late last night. Her sister's been killed in a road accident. In London.' Then he says, 'She's distraught. They were terribly close. She was beside herself.'

'Oh, Jesus,' Stella says, going cold all over. She bursts into tears.

'Oh, for Christ's sake.' She cries and cries. She can hardly believe that life can be so horrible, so malicious, to her and to Ellen. And all in a single day.

She began to tell him about Izzy and Grania, and about her father and the woman in  Fortnum's. She tells him as she watches him pack. His stuff is already folded on the bed, his trunk open on the floor, his things folded sleeves to middles in neat, flat, square parcels, classified in groups. They look like items in an old-fashioned gentleman's outfitters. He puts dirty things in a linen drawstring bag marked 'Linen'. He has special cloth bags for his shoes. He has a wooden box with shoe polish. Putting the things into his trunk takes him five minutes. Then he folds his duvet carefully and puts it on top of everything." (p118-9)

Stay safe. Be kind. Pack your stuff.