I didn't enjoy this as much as I expected to, but I think it is more me and less the book this time. I liked the first chapter, then lost my ability to concentrate. ( )

I didn't enjoy this as much as I expected to, but I think it is more me and less the book this time. I liked the first chapter, then lost my ability to concentrate. ( )

I liked the writing, and a couple of the characters, but the plot resolution involved about six too many coincidences to be at all realistic, and the couples resolved themselves a bit too quickly and neatly. I suspect this is supposed to be a clever pastiche of a comic opera, but I didn't get it. ( )

Barbara Trapido is a wonderful writer, clever, amusing and romantic - dealing with the 'big' topics in an apparently light, but nuanced and sophisticated way. This novel, as you might expect, takes an operatic theme - and perhaps that's where I wasn't as convinced as I have been by her other novels. She sets up a complex plot, suitable for a comic opera, and then resolves it, slotting relationships together or apart, with recurring characters and themes; walk on roles (often the most intensely realised) and a set of fabulous locations, costumes, sets and casts. I think at times the necessities of the plot (I found myself searching back for links or glimpses a number of times) drive and restrict the narrative a bit too much. But this is carping - I'd certainly recommend it, just not as the place to start with Trapido.

One of the best books I’ve read this year, T was strangely reluctant to begin Sex & Stravinsky but the pleasure deferred became a pleasure hugely enhanced when I sampled Trapido’s champagne prose, elegant and sparkling.

A stylish romantic fantasy, the book straddles two continents with the tale of Hattie, delicate and exquisite, and her husband Herman, a South African couple, and their unspeakably awful adolescent daughter Cat; in England we have the indefatigably capable Amazon Caroline, her South African-born husband Josh, and Zoe, their balletomane teenage daughter.

They come together in a magical but unlikely Midsummer Night’s Dream scenario except the place is Durban not an Athenian forest, and instead of Oberon and Titania we have Hattie and Josh. Dazzling and exuberant, this book is a treat. ( )