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Trio
Northumberland, winter 1937. In a remote moorland cottage, Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, is filled with grief at the death of his wife. Through a charismatic colleague, Frank Embleton, and Frank's sister, Diana, he is drawn into the beguiling world of a group of musicians, and falls under their spell. But as war approaches a decision is made which calls all their lives shockingly into question. Moving between the isolated beauty of the moors, a hill-town school and a graceful old country house, Trio explores conscience and idealism, love and desire, and the power of music to disturb, uplift and affirm.
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First published January 1, 2016
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About the author
Sue Gee
23 books38 followersSue Gee was born in India, where her father was an Army officer. She had a her elder brother, Robert, now a retired radiographer living in Spain. She grew up on a Devon farm, and in a village in Leicestershire, before instaled in Surrey in 1960. She lived in north London for 27 years with the journalist Marek Mayer, they had a son, Jamie. She married Mayer in November 2003, less of two years before his death on 23th July 2005. Now, she lived in the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.
Published since 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim and was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 by her novel Thin Air.
She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.
Published since 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim and was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 by her novel Thin Air.
She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 18, 2016
Sue Gee’s tenth novel is a sensitive portrait of life’s transience and the things that give us purpose. In the late 1930s, a widowed history teacher in Northumberland finds a new lease on life when he falls for one of the members of a local trio of musicians. My favorite passages of the book are descriptive ones, often comprised of short, evocative phrases; I also loved the banter between the musicians. The novel has a reasonably simple plot. We delve into the past to discover each main character’s backstory and some unexpected romantic entanglements, but in the 1930s storyline there aren’t a lot of subplots to distract from the main action. I was reminded in places of Downton Abbey: the grand hall and its village surroundings, the build-up to war, the characters you come to love and cheer for.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
February 12, 2022
Book 1 of "Trio", which forms the greater part of this novel, is set in the Northumberland countryside, in the years leading up to the Second World War. Its narrative style, however, seems to hark back to an earlier age. In its story of a young widower rediscovering life and love through friendship and music, it reminded me, say, of Thomas Hardy's novels. Domestic tragedies and occasional joys experienced within a small community play out against a global backdrop, whilst the countryside, with its cycle of seasons, serves as a constant reminder of the metaphysical.
The pastoral scenes are lovingly drawn and the story unfolds in a gentle and understated way as new relationships blossom and grow, accompanied by the classical music of the "Hepplewick Trio" which gives the novel its title. There are few narrative thrills and frills - except perhaps for the "postscript-style" Book 2 which I initially found disconcerting and then rather "contrived" when compared to the natural flow of Book 1.
Don't let this comment put you off the novel, though - it's a worthy addition to the select tradition of books inspired by or featuring music.
The pastoral scenes are lovingly drawn and the story unfolds in a gentle and understated way as new relationships blossom and grow, accompanied by the classical music of the "Hepplewick Trio" which gives the novel its title. There are few narrative thrills and frills - except perhaps for the "postscript-style" Book 2 which I initially found disconcerting and then rather "contrived" when compared to the natural flow of Book 1.
Don't let this comment put you off the novel, though - it's a worthy addition to the select tradition of books inspired by or featuring music.
Read
February 23, 2018Trio opens with death and closes with death. That might make this book sound sombre, which in some ways it is but it’s far from being the only characteristic of it. The first pair of characters we are introduced to is Margaret and Steven. They’re a married couple living out on the moors – far away from their respective families. Margaret is ill, so badly that she is completely bed-ridden and soon after the book opens – she dies, leaving Steven a widower, unable to conceive a life without his wife and this little house on the moors. Steven works as a teacher, and through his job and his colleagues, he comes into contact with a musical trio – Margot, Diana, and George, clearly where the book has drawn its title from. The story follows these characters and many more as they move through life and their own individual heartbreaks and aches, budding love and love lost, death and sickness, hopes crushed and dreams waiting to be fulfilled. The setting is England right before the Second World War, this pre-war setting is seen through the building tension in the world around the characters as one and another is affected by increasing uncertainty, waiting to throw everything into chaos.
Full Review: https://weneedhunny.wordpress.com/201...
Full Review: https://weneedhunny.wordpress.com/201...
January 20, 2017
I very much enjoyed this author's prose style--lyrical and descriptive, yet simple and evocative. The story is bittersweet but basically hopeful. At first I was disconcerted by the sudden switch to the 1980s in the last part, with a new cast of characters, and I never did get them all straight, let alone feel much empathy with them. However, on reflection, I think that telling the rest of Steven and Margot's story through the more distanced perspective was the right choice. Otherwise it might have become mundane or maudlin. And with Geoffrey himself recently widowed, the theme of bereavement picks up again. I recommend this book and plan to seek out others by this author.
September 20, 2017
I have never read anything by this author before, but I will certainly be seeking out the rest of her work on the basis of this fine offering. It may have been a foolish book to have read on the eve of my Mum's anniversary - dealing as it does, with grief & music intertwined - but I actually found it strangely comforting. Sue Gee's descriptions of bereavement are note-perfect and I was wholly captivated by the story. The second part, which seems to have divided opinion on GR, I enjoyed too. I felt it wrapped things up nicely and tied up all the loose ends. With its strong characterisations, beautiful, evocative writing this novel totally captivated me and I highly recommend it.
December 29, 2016
A truly lovely book. Gentle and deep at the same time. Grief, love, country living in England just before the second world war... I grew to love the characters. A very satisfying book to read.
June 29, 2016
Sue Gee seems to be one of those authors who’s both prolific and successful, and yet is still relatively unknown. She was long listed for the Orange Prize in 2005, which is exactly the sort of thing that happens to good writers who, for some reason or another, don’t please the mainstream as well as they might. That she isn’t better known is, on the basis of her new book Trio, a travesty, though perhaps not a surprise. It’s the sort of book that tends to suffer in an industry that has taken Twitter to its bosom. (I am not knocking Twitter. I mostly love Twitter and am increasingly coming to depend on it, which is a whole ‘nother story, as Americans say.) The point is that Trio is tender, nuanced, and although it contains plot points which could easily be played for melodrama, Gee’s writing is so fine that when you read those moments in her book, they pass in front of you in a thoroughly natural way. That’s terribly difficult to explain in 140 characters.
Read the rest of the review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2016...
Read the rest of the review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2016...
November 14, 2019
Such a beautiful follow up to Sebastian Faulks Birdsong.
January 5, 2017
Things I loved were how the author weaved in the moors and Northumbrian landscaped into the book. The landscape, in a way, tells the story.
It also is a meditation about grief and the effect on people. Also on how the characters overcome it (or continue to fight throughout their lives and can't).
It's also about music - It was a fantastic element to be added and it gave the story and further layer of depth and meaning far beyond words.
Overall, I absolutely loved this and will 100% recommend it.
It also is a meditation about grief and the effect on people. Also on how the characters overcome it (or continue to fight throughout their lives and can't).
It's also about music - It was a fantastic element to be added and it gave the story and further layer of depth and meaning far beyond words.
Overall, I absolutely loved this and will 100% recommend it.
February 20, 2017
This book left me with an ache in my heart and the desire to add more music to my life.
May 22, 2017
(This review first appeared on my own website blog at www.lindanewbery.co.uk)
I’ve enjoyed several of Sue Gee’s novels since reading THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT many years ago. That’s still my favourite, though this one, her latest, comes close, and shares similar ingredients: rural life, loss and recovery, the tentative beginnings of a new relationship, music, social conscience.
The setting here is Northumberland in the three years before the outbreak of the second world war. Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, loses his wife to tuberculosis, and stays on, bereft and alone, in the remote moorland cottage that was their home. A charismatic colleage, Frank Embleton, from a far more affluent background, draws Steven into his social circle: the trio of the title, comprising Frank’s beautiful sister Diana, who plays the cello; violinist George, who nurtures a secret love; and aristocratic Margot, the pianist, who has lived all her life at Hepplewick Hall, which she now shares with her widowed father. Knowing little about music, Steven is drawn in, finding an appreciation that helps him through his grief and attracts him to Margot. The two have little in common apart from bereavement – Margot’s mother died when she was a little girl – but the attraction is mutual. Sue Gee excels at portraying the first flare of attraction, its growth into love and the flashes of insight, understanding and tension that pass between people who know each other well, as these musicians do.
Her writing about music will have you searching YouTube or your CD collection so that you can hear what Steven hears, as he begins to understand “that the whole piece was a conversation between their instruments, a move from question to answer, from gentle enquiry to passionate response … when he watched Margot’s slender body half lift from the stool in a fast, dramatic passage, as if she couldn’t stop herself, he began to wonder at what it must do to you, to play like this. And at who you must be, to want to make it your life.”
Always in the background, becoming more evident as the months pass, is the threat of war: Guernica, the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss. Steven worries about Frank, who is secretive about his political activities, and about the adolescent boys he teaches who will soon be of age for military service. The school scenes are particularly well done, showing us Steven’s regard for the boys, his diligence, the staffroom exchanges and the solace he finds in work. Sue Gee also has a wonderfully easy way of making readers aware of weather, the seasons and the natural landscape, contrasting the wild moorland scenery with the elegant landscaping of the grounds at Hepplewick Hall, with its cedar tree and ha-ha.
A coda, a short Book Two which brings us into the present and the viewpoint of Steven’s son, now elderly, comes as a jolt, and introduces maybe too many new characters, but is a clever way of leapfrogging the war while showing us what happened in the lives of the main players, then and since. And, just as importantly, to the places.
I suspect that some readers will find Sue Gee’s careful evocation of character, relationships and social settings rather too slow; others will find it poignant and engrossing, as I did.
I’ve enjoyed several of Sue Gee’s novels since reading THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT many years ago. That’s still my favourite, though this one, her latest, comes close, and shares similar ingredients: rural life, loss and recovery, the tentative beginnings of a new relationship, music, social conscience.
The setting here is Northumberland in the three years before the outbreak of the second world war. Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, loses his wife to tuberculosis, and stays on, bereft and alone, in the remote moorland cottage that was their home. A charismatic colleage, Frank Embleton, from a far more affluent background, draws Steven into his social circle: the trio of the title, comprising Frank’s beautiful sister Diana, who plays the cello; violinist George, who nurtures a secret love; and aristocratic Margot, the pianist, who has lived all her life at Hepplewick Hall, which she now shares with her widowed father. Knowing little about music, Steven is drawn in, finding an appreciation that helps him through his grief and attracts him to Margot. The two have little in common apart from bereavement – Margot’s mother died when she was a little girl – but the attraction is mutual. Sue Gee excels at portraying the first flare of attraction, its growth into love and the flashes of insight, understanding and tension that pass between people who know each other well, as these musicians do.
Her writing about music will have you searching YouTube or your CD collection so that you can hear what Steven hears, as he begins to understand “that the whole piece was a conversation between their instruments, a move from question to answer, from gentle enquiry to passionate response … when he watched Margot’s slender body half lift from the stool in a fast, dramatic passage, as if she couldn’t stop herself, he began to wonder at what it must do to you, to play like this. And at who you must be, to want to make it your life.”
Always in the background, becoming more evident as the months pass, is the threat of war: Guernica, the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss. Steven worries about Frank, who is secretive about his political activities, and about the adolescent boys he teaches who will soon be of age for military service. The school scenes are particularly well done, showing us Steven’s regard for the boys, his diligence, the staffroom exchanges and the solace he finds in work. Sue Gee also has a wonderfully easy way of making readers aware of weather, the seasons and the natural landscape, contrasting the wild moorland scenery with the elegant landscaping of the grounds at Hepplewick Hall, with its cedar tree and ha-ha.
A coda, a short Book Two which brings us into the present and the viewpoint of Steven’s son, now elderly, comes as a jolt, and introduces maybe too many new characters, but is a clever way of leapfrogging the war while showing us what happened in the lives of the main players, then and since. And, just as importantly, to the places.
I suspect that some readers will find Sue Gee’s careful evocation of character, relationships and social settings rather too slow; others will find it poignant and engrossing, as I did.
May 11, 2017
I reached into this jewel box of a novel and pulled out a bouquet of cow parsley and a starched handkerchief. Heard the call of curlews, the bawling of lambs, the strains of a Mendelssohn trio. Felt the cold of a stone cottage on the moors and the heat of a crackling fire in an old country house called Hepplewick. Hot tea from heavy silver. Forsythia blossoms floating in rain puddles. A grand piano and a grandfather clock. An ancient resinous cedar tree hung with a swing. Capability Brown and a ha-ha. Beethoven, Brahms, Elgar. A shell-shocked veteran of the Somme weeping at a Christmas concert. Letters written on heavy cream stock. Loss and longing and love. So much love. Read this book.
March 8, 2023
Not as good as I had hoped! It held promise, and I enjoyed (perhaps not the right word) the description about the protagonist's (Stephen) grief over losing his wife- a bit repetitive but beautiful and you could feel the emotion...however, what really annoyed me was that in less than a year, he was blooming over it! So much for a story about all-consuming grief and about a man who was absolutely devoted to his wife! So that annoyed me and then it got boring for me. I also didn't understand book two as it seemed pointless and more boring.
Overall, disappointed.
Overall, disappointed.
July 4, 2018
One of the loveliest novels about music I have read, up there with Vikram Seth's An Equal Music. Sue Gee is gifted at evoking not only music but landscape, and I was captivated by her descriptions of the Northumberland moor. The story is heart-rending and perhaps some will find bits of it overly sentimental. I'm sentimental - and a romantic - and it moved me. I'm keen to read more of her novels.
July 16, 2020
A true Sue Gee
I've not read a Sue Gee for a few years and was delighted to be introduced to this by my sister who said it was the best book she'd read in a while. She is absolutely right this is a wonderful understated love story beautifully written. I've already downloaded another book I've missed out on.
I've not read a Sue Gee for a few years and was delighted to be introduced to this by my sister who said it was the best book she'd read in a while. She is absolutely right this is a wonderful understated love story beautifully written. I've already downloaded another book I've missed out on.
March 1, 2018
Enjoyed this: evocative. (there was some snow in it which was v relevant!)
October 28, 2022
Confusing did not finish
May have been better on hard copy. I was
Listening to an audio book.
May have been better on hard copy. I was
Listening to an audio book.
February 10, 2024
Beautiful, sensitively written story of love and longing. Music is the conduit. I have never read any of this authors work but will do now, loved it.
March 18, 2017
Finished during Offa's dyke walk
July 15, 2016
For this anglophile a book like this is like a box of fancy chocolates! I couldn't stop reading. Somewhat reminiscent of Delderfield's books - so I think it's time I re-read some of those.
Read
September 7, 2016Definitely casts a spell. A slow progression from 'not a happy place', with an interesting cast of characters.
September 22, 2016
Very good read. A book set in the mid 20th century. Well drawn characters, ostensibly leading happy lives, but separation and grief intrude.
September 26, 2016
Excellent, as all her books are.
January 2, 2017
Disappointing. It started well but ended in a muddle
November 16, 2016
Beautifully written.
March 30, 2017
this was a wonderful peaceful novel. I enjoyed every minute of it's musical beauty. such tranquility. just breathtaking.
April 17, 2017
This book is beautiful. It is a true work of art.
July 7, 2017
This would have been a five star review except for the odd last section set in the present day. I think the author wanted us to have the end of Steven and Margot's story but I would have been just as happy without it.
However having said that I really loved this book, it doesn't have much plot but the atmosphere is so exquisite I wanted to climb inside and live there.
I learned a lot about Trio music and this novel has a lot in common ; a melody is introduced and then repeated in a different way and interwoven with the different storylines echoing each other. Beautiful, beautiful writing.
However having said that I really loved this book, it doesn't have much plot but the atmosphere is so exquisite I wanted to climb inside and live there.
I learned a lot about Trio music and this novel has a lot in common ; a melody is introduced and then repeated in a different way and interwoven with the different storylines echoing each other. Beautiful, beautiful writing.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews