The Travelling Hornplayer

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 * GUARDIAN *
Murdochian entertainment: a tragicomedy of errors. Trapido ... races along with a kind of nervy glamour * NEW YORKER *
This woman is brilliant. She deserves to be up there, topping the bestseller lists and winning all the prizes. And she actually makes you laugh … I enjoyed every page of this book, which is so shimmering with wit, hectic energy and crazy convolutions of plots that I eneded up in a state of sublime, satiated exhaustion * DAILY MAIL *
Sprinkled with magic * SUNDAY TIMES *
An entrancing, quirky confection packed with such a rich mixture of fun and pathos that readers may need to pause occasionally, if only draw emotional breath … She has the mind-teasing skills of a crime-writer combined with a sense of humour as dry as a Martini * TELEGRAPH *
Witty ... moving ... clever, warm-hearted * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *
A funny, cunning and surprisingly sexy novel, which moved at least this reader to both tears and laughter * SUNDAY TIMES *
The brilliant [Trapido] ... is one of the better-kept secrets of contemporary letters ... [She] is a great novelist; sooner or later the whole reading world will know it * SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE *
Audacious, energetic and dazzing … The vividness, and the immediately engaging style, is as sure as ever, and the Dickensian swiftness with which she can draw a character is full of charm … There aren’t many novelists whose stories one doesn’t want to end, but Barbara Trapido is one of them -- PHILIP HENSHER * MAIL ON SUNDAY *
Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure. Afterwards, I went out and bought everything else she has written - and am only disappointed I didn't do it earlier * INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY *