{"title":"Books by Barbara Trapido","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780747594710","title":"Temples of Delight","description":"Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204075323570,"sku":"9780747594710","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780747594710_db95b013-6f49-4f01-bf62-c0d7de4c94cd.jpg?v=1786014507"},{"product_id":"9780747594727","title":"The Travelling Hornplayer","description":"\u003cp\u003eSelected as a Radio 4 Good Read by Maggie O'Farrell\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Sprinkled with magic’ - Sunday Times ‘Audacious, energetic and dazzing … 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\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSisters Ellen and Lydia live out an idyllic girlhood in Oxford, their wayward adventures of no concern to their passive, donnish father and their chilly stepmother. Even when Lydia is killed in a car accident, death isn't enough to keep her from her sister, cheerfully returning to haunt her. But Ellen, unwittingly, is herself haunting the lives of those around her: there is Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter Stella, the 'nuisance chip'; and Stella's genius painter-boy lover Izzy. 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure’ - Independent on Sunday Books of the Year ‘This woman is brilliant. 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 ended up in a state of sublime, satiated exhaustion’ - Daily Mail 'She has the mind-teasing skills of a crime-writer combined with a sense of humour as dry as a Martini' - Sunday Telegraph\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296788296053,"sku":"9780747594727","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780747594727_42a194b1-25ac-44d7-971b-aee7a9aa8582.jpg?v=1786014508"},{"product_id":"9780747599593","title":"Frankie \u0026 Stankie","description":"\u003cp\u003eBarbara Trapido's captivating novel of coming-of-age novel about sisters, friendship and political awakening in 1950s South Africa\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘This is a gorgeous book about growing up … it also manages to convey, with admirable lightness of touch, the dawning of a political consciousness … A wonderful read' - Observer'A beautifully written slice of both personal and political history … by the end of the novel, you are immersed in her world and simply never want to leave it' - Guardian'A blissfully funny sequence of portraits, family upon family, vignette upon vignette' - Daily Telegraph\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice. And then there's the puzzle of lunch break. 'Would you rather have a native girl or a koelie to make your sandwiches?' a first-year classmate asks. But Dinah doesn't know the answer, because it's her dad who makes her sandwiches. As the apparatus of repression rolls on, Dinah finds her own way. As we follow her journey through childhood and adolescence, we enter into one of the darker passages of twentieth-century history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296795210101,"sku":"9780747599593","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780747599593_d4a84e1e-6105-4076-940d-c76a0879741b.jpg?v=1786014545"},{"product_id":"9781408809815","title":"Sex and Stravinsky","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAN ASTOUNDING NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF \u003ci\u003eFRANKIE AND STANKIE \u003c\/i\u003eAND \u003ci\u003eBROTHER OF THE MORE FAMOUS JACK\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A dazzling achievement. It's beautifully-written, deftly-plotted and moves skilfully from domestic drama to global themes and back again' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e- Daily Express\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Delightful and brilliantly choreographed comedy' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e- Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe time is 1995, but everybody has a past. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband with Stravinsky-glasses and twelve-year-old daughter. Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for lessons; a thing denied her until a chance encounter on a school French exchange. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMeanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie, Josh's first love, now writes girls' ballet books - that's when she can carve out the space between her husband and her crosspatch daughter. From far and wide, they are all drawn together: a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'This wonderful novel sparkles with Midsummer Night's Dream magic' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e- Daily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘Beautifully structured, with flashes of wonderful eccentricity' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e- The Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56298837148021,"sku":"9781408809815","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781408809815_b7614774-81f0-4789-9a5b-e2fff79c757a.jpg?v=1786019713"},{"product_id":"9780747594703","title":"Juggling","description":"‘A brilliant book’ - Mary Wesley, Daily Mail ‘She is simply dynamite … There are no apparent bounds to Trapido’s skill, her inventiveness and her knowledge’ - Philip Hensher, GuardianSparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn't be more different. And when they meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, the four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous coincidences and eleventh-hour entrances interrupted one disastrous Halloween when schoolboy revelry turns horribly wrong. Three years on, as Christina has made it to Oxford to study English. While she analyses the wit, cruelty and crossed genders of Shakespearean comedy, the cast of her own life reunites and the curtain falls on some gloriously unexpected partnerships.   ‘Juggling by Barbara Trapido is, I think, already well known but it should be even more so. It has the best piece of Shakespeare criticism in it I’ve ever read’ - Katherine Rundell, Guardian‘A joy to read … Supremely skilful’ - Observer‘She weaves a cat’s cradle of wit and erudition around her high-stepping characters, take breath-taking risks and triumphs against all the odds’ - Independent","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311893197173,"sku":"9780747594703","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780747594703_21e6c90c-e26f-4423-9f53-e99a4169b67b.jpg?v=1786014505"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-barbara-trapido.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}