Trumpet

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Black, white; man, woman; father, child: questions of identity blur in this hypnotic story of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody, who, like the real Billy Tipton, is shockingly discovered after his death to have been a woman. Told from the point of view of his grief-stricken widow Millie, his adopted son Colman and Sophie Stones, a tabloid hack hot on Moody's trail, Trumpet is about the walls between what is known and what is secret. "Every person goes about their life with a bit of perversion that is unadmittable, secretive, loathed," Kaye writes. Marred by a central inconsistency--could Joss Moody have been both such a wonderful husband and such a terrible father?--this debut novel's music comes from the language: spare, haunting, dreamlike.

--By Elizabeth Gleick