What do You think about The Travelling Hornplayer (2000)?
Barbara Trapido's technique is immaculate, her almost classical structures clever, and this entertaining book takes a reader on quite a roller coaster: laughing out loud one moment; edge of tears a paragraph later. More than a modern Austen, I think her tales of upper middle class life make her more of a successor to Wodehouse or maybe Coward. But ... Everyone is perhaps a bit too clever, a bit too talented ... And while I found myself engaging with some of the characters, this was generally not a social milieu I could easily identify with. Might I read another book by her? Maybe? She's undoubtedly a gifted writer. And if not, then the fault is possibly my own, but in all honesty there are other authors who offer more of what I want.
—Ben Ballin
