Sex and Stravinsky

by Barbara Trapido

Book by Barbara Trapido

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Ebooks, South Africa, France

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Felice · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a writer I consider to be the antidote to Women's Fiction. It is Barbara Trapido. Oh Barbara Trapido! ~~sigh~~ Barbara Trapido is my bellwether for novels about modern women. There is nothing out of the ordinary about her storylines. No one is starting a not for proffit to help the urchins of the world, there isn't a killer lurking in the background of the heroine's life and no intrepid reporter eager to tell the world of an upcoming pandemic. Still, she dazzles me. Her plots are what could have happened to you if...or just like what your friend told you about that woman she met on the train. Classic women's fiction stuff but in Trapido's hands there is a left of center reality to the situations that captures me.

Trapido's latest novel is Sex and Stravinsky. This book covers two families and their skeletons over twenty years in Oxford and South Africa. In 1970's Oxford Caroline McCleod is a beautiful, capable, I-can-make-your-mismatched-napkin-rings-into-your-next-kidney force of nature. She is a graduate student, married to Josh, (Oh Josh, Josh, Josh. Josh the little South African---ready?---getting his PhD in mime studies. There's a cross to bare.) mother to Zoe and happy. When cold hearted Mom and mean-spirited younger sister (Mom loves sis best) arrive from Australia demanding to be supported Caroline comes close to abandoning all in favor of doing anything to get her Mother's love and attention.

Josh had a seemingly happier childhood than his wife. He was raised in South Africa by politically active parents whose ideals he replaces with his own vanity. Husband Josh might have married Caroline on the rebound. Back home in South Africa he was in love with ballerina Hattie but she threw him over and Josh scurried off to Oxford. Hattie married successful but emotionally harsh architect Herman. She spends her time squirreled away physically and emotionally from her husband, beefy sons and pouty daughter writing novels about ballet.

Of course the two families will find themselves in the same place at the same time and changes will ensue. There are dramas a plenty in Sex and Stravinsky: misplaced loyalties, hidden paternity, separated twins, career setbacks, unhappy marriages, troubled teenagers, etc. All the staples of Women's Fiction but Trapido handles them with intelligence, candor and unexpected and (actually funny) humor.


No one gets away with anything in a Trapido novel. She makes her characters accountable for their decisions. Caroline has suffered through an unhappy childhood and that's sad but she isn't allowed as an adult to play the blameless victim of a wicked Mother. Caroline's inability to step away from a relationship that will never bring her any satisfaction may cause her and her daughter's downfall. Josh has spent most of his life playing the adolescent and running away when challenged by life. Now as a husband and father he has to grow up or say good-bye to his family.

Trapido moves between her characters skillfully and swiftly. There is an artful precision to the dance (dance is present throughout this novel) of changing partners, identities and misplaced goals that Trapido presents in this book. Caroline, Josh, Hattie and their daughters each discover their purpose but can they stay dedicated to its pursuit? Sex and Stravinsky is a wonderfully enjoyable life lesson in what happens when you let your dreams take a back seat to the desires of others.

There is not another writer of Women's Fiction out there with the vision, style and talent of Barbara Trapido. That's the great news. The really bad news is that none of Barbara Trapido's excellent novels --and I love them all--are in the print in the U.S. I first discovered her years ago when Penguin U.S. did a couple of her novels. This was before I was in a position to handsell the hell out of them and therefore single handsell-ed-ly create a lucrative market for her novels on this side of the Atlantic. I have spent years recommending her to sales reps and other publishing people but to no avail. You may find her in a local library or second hand shop. If you do you are in luck. I don't trust to fate. I buy her books from a U.K. bookshop and gladly pay the shipping. That is real love.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barbra Trapido has a knack of creating quirky, unusual characters that resemble no-one you are ever likely to meet in real life. In her latest novel there are at least six of these. My favourite is the perfectionist Caroline who can do almost anything from making a three-dimensional multi-tiered birthday card to creating her own wedding gown from a remant found in some second hand furniture. Her perfection fails, however, when it comes to resisting the emotional blackmail of her mother. The reader is positively gobsmacked at the lack of backbone Caroline shows when it comes to resisting her mother's excessive and unreasonable demands. You almost want to shake her. Second to this is the lack of backbone Josh, her husband, shows in allowing himself to be complicit in acceding to Caroline's mother's interference in their marriage. In order to pay off the mortgage on a house Caroline buys for her mother, the couple are obliged to live like students on a double decker bus in a field outside Oxford. On top of that, Caroline works a full time job to give her non-working mother a monthly allowance.

In counterpoint to Caroline and Josh are Hattie and Herman. Hattie is Josh's childhood sweetheart, a mild and sweet-natured ballet teacher, whose lack of self-confidence led her to choose as a husband, Herman, a partner way more macho than Josh. Prior to this, she had already elected to remain in Durban, South Africa when Josh's scholarship took him to the UK. As time goes by, Hattie becomes more and more estranged from the alpha, domineering Herman and their marriage becomes one in name only.

Both couples have offspring, the most interesting of which are the teenage girls Zoe and Cat. Both girls are disenchanted with their mothers but show it in different ways. Zoe is moody and sullen, while Cat is outright rebellious and totally disrespectful of her mild, minute mother.

The link between all the characters in the book is Jack, son of Josh's Zulu domestic worker, who grew up almost as a brother to the older Josh. When he is sent to boarding school in Swaziland, Jack runs away and instantly strips himself of his own identity and reinvents himself firstly as the French Jacques and later the Italian Giacomo. In the process he becomes hard, cynical and totally self-interested. When he finally returns to Durban, he becomes the pivot of the action as he rents the garden cottage of Hattie and Herman's house and becomes the focal point of Cat's excessive interest.

The final coming together of the characters is a little farcical but brilliantly funny nonetheless. Although one realises the outcome bears no resemblance to real life, it is quite satisfying, nontheless.

If there were half stars, I would give this novel three and a half.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it’s an attention grabbing title, but I would have rushed out and bought a new book by Barbara Trapido whatever it had been called. It was around the time of Juggling and Temples of Delight that I first fell in love with her writing. And the backlist that I investigated and the new books that I rushed out to find continued the romance.

The words that came to mind were warm, quirky and real. So Sex and Stravinsky came as a surprise! What did it mean?

Well, it seems that the author has drawn inspiration from Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. A ballet of complex relationships, stolen identity, missed opportunity and triumphant rebirth. Certainly all of those can be found within this text.

The relationships would be best explained by a three dimensional diagram, but I don’thave that facility, and so I shall do my best to explain as I work my way down the page.

First there is Josh, a South African who has come to England to study for a PhD in mime studies. Yes, really! He was a simple, quiet character, and so he was surprised that he was the man chosen by Caroline. She was an Australian student, beautiful, witty and the kind of girl who could create her own wedding dress from a discarded festoon blind, cater with panache for pennies, turn a dilapidated terraced house into a stylish home…

Caroline beat Josh in the entertainment stakes, but I’m afraid he trounced her in the believability stakes.

She became a little more believable when her fatal flaw came to light. She felt compelled to support her demanding, widowed mother. So she and Josh lived in a small house and accepted that they could only afford one child, while they supported her mother in a comfortable house of her own.

Josh and Caroline’s daughter, Zoe, reads girls’ ballet books and longs for ballet lessons. She is sent on a school French exchange and finds herself with the family from hell. You feel for her, you really do. But then she meets a runaway boy who shares her passion for dance…

Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie , Josh’s first love, has a successful career writing the ballet books that Zoe reads. But she struggles to cope with Herman, her demanding husband and Cat, her adolescent daughter, who is planning to take a most unexpected step forward.

And finally there is Jack. Also known as Jacques. Also known as Giacomo. The housemaid’s son, who has come home after travelling the world. Why?

Caroline who propels the plot when she discovers that her mother is not as poor as she claims. Indeed, she is positively rich. The worm turns. Caroline takes positive decisive action, and you just have to cheer. Suddenly I loved Caroline!

Her next step is to collect her daughter from France and take her to Africa, where Josh is at a conference. Where he bumps into Hattie. Who takes him home to meet her family.

And so all of the cast is assembled, and an elaborate dance begins. It’s a little contrived, the outcome is a little too neat, but I loved it anyway.

Because Barbara Trapido still has that magic. She creates such a lovely mix of utterly believable characters and relationships, balances quirkiness perfectly with serious themes, and tells wonderful tales that keep the pages turning.

There is more darkness here than I found in Barbara Trapido’s earlier books, but so much light too.

And yes, there are echoes of Pulcinella: stolen identity, missed opportunity and triumphant rebirth.

Not the magic I was expecting, but magic nonetheless.

[Trish at Between My Lines · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review was originally posted on [Between My Lines]

[Jules · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear. This was a weird one!

It’s not so often that you start a new book and then become totally surprised when it changes genre halfway through.

The first half of this book seemed like contemporary fiction (quite likeable), then it changed into chick lit (quite unlikeable) before transforming into the weirdest and most banal brand of young adult fiction (quite unpalatable). Just goes to show that books can uncannily change everything they ever seemed to be about before your very eyes and without any warning.

In the stronger first half of the book, Trapido was showing promise to me as a writer and I liked the way she alternated her narration of the story by offering each character their own narrative ‘lens’ in progressive character-centred chapters. This technique waned on me a bit though as the book’s genre seemed to transform and my own belief-factor and enjoyment of the story collapsed by the plotline and characterisation becoming totally implausible.

The highly unbelievable theme and plotline of the book deals with characters who, after time and separation, meet again through fate and chance encounters before eventually changing their own fates by making ‘the right choices’ to make themselves happy. Hmmmm – cheese alert – yes I know this sounds (and indeed is) ‘très fromage’. Does the writer really think her readers are so naive and easily pleased?

I can’t imagine that you would be too surprised to find out that I’m actually quite happy to have finished this book and it’s one of those lovely little reading cherries that I’ll simply put down to experience – filed under one measly star. Interesting that on the book’s back cover, a (London) Time’s quote labels this book as having ‘flashes of wonderful eccentricity’ – eccentricity strikes me as a mild term that they have used here –perhaps ‘insanity’ could have been a better choice of word, non?

Concluding question – “will I read other books by this author?” – concluding answer – “not in a hurry – NO!”

Just not recommended - not ever!

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this first some years ago and wrote the following:

I was initially delighted by the humour of the novel but as it progressed recognised that unless I treated this as an unrealistic comedy in the Shakespearean tradition of adopted children, changing partners and ‘all’s well that ends well’ it would become annoyingly predictable. I ended up enjoying it as a light read but wouldn’t recommend it is a must (or even should) read.

But the second time around I was obviously more in the mood for this light-hearted romp. I remembered a lot of it and read it with tongue in cheek �� how ill-matched partners, mothers and daughters eventually sort out happy – or at least bearable – endings. Josh is married to superwoman Caroline, whose only weakness is devotion to a gruesome mother, but has never forgotten his first love, ballet teacher Hattie (married to the dominating Afrikaner, Herman. If you accept the conventions and the unlikely attachment of Caroline to her mother (made almost plausible by a late revelation), this is thoroughly enjoyable.

Upgraded to three and a half stars.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. There's not a lot to it, the ending (where the two couples swap round) was embarrassingly predictable and the young daughter's voice (like, like, like) was stereotyped and trite. But...despite all that, it was an easy and absorbing read. And I have to admit I was really completely invovled and horrified when Caroline discovers that her mother, whose mortgage she has been paying to her own detriment, has left everything to her other daughter. Awful.

[Mei · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was okay, it didn't move me overly much but the characterisation of Caroline as a veritable wonder woman was very appealing - how can you not wish that you were a woman who can make her own wedding dress from random cast-offs of cloth from charity shops and can pack things into a hat box without wasting an inch of space? Secretly I'm sure we all wish we were like that.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw this book in the library I recalled reading another one by the same author, Frankie and Stankie, with its vivid evocation of a Durban childhood. I didn't review that one on Good Reads, so I don't know how many stars I would have given it, but I did write about it on my blog Growing up in Durban | Notes from underground.

But I found this one rather disappointing. The descriptions were not as vivid, and seemed somehow less authentic. When Barbara Trapido describes scenes from the 1940s to the 1970s she is usually spot on, but in Sex and Stravinsky the main action takes place in 1995, and the descriptions seem anachronistic. Perhaps the most jarring was the use of "the uni" to refer to universities. I don't know if South African students use that term now, but I'm pretty sure they didn't use it in 1995 (when I was still working at a university). In my own student days we spoke of "varsity", never of "uni", and I think I first encountered "uni" on the internet, and only in this century. I believe it started in Australia and was adopted in the UK, but does not seem to be used much elsewhere.

Another anachronism was the description of cell phones. In 1995 they were a novelty in South Africa, and were about the size of bricks. Very few people had them, and those that did would ostentatiously show that they had them. There was a story of a man walking into a restaurant talking on his cell phone when, to his embarrassment, it rang.

Apart from the anachronisms, there are serious plot holes. The story is about characters whose lives are linked by an amazing series of coincidences, which stretch credulity too far, and keep on happening. One of the characters, Josh, who lectures in theatre, perhaps explains this, when his mother-in-law takes him and his wife to see Rigoletto, which he did not enjoy:

-He likes early opera, for heavens sake; chamber opera, tightly-plotted comedies in which everyone is in love with somebody else's betrothed, and sundry marriage contracts are called into question by a range of incompetent stage lawyers. Foppish drunken halfwits or scheming rogues. He likes it when the entire dramatis personae is cheating, spying, playing dead and dressing up in other people's clothes.

Some of Shakespeare's comedies are like that, and indeed A midsummer night's dream makes an appearance in the book. In some ways it looks as though Barbara Trapido is trying to write the whole book along the lines of one of those early operas, but though it may have worked for 17th-century stage productions, it doesn't come off too well in a 21st-century novel.

I quite enjoyed reading it, and wanted to know what happened to the characters in the end, but it was disappointing. There were too many dei ex machina, and some of the characters were too inconsistent.

[Sarah-Kate Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Barbara Trapido wrote a book of phone numbers and plant names, I would still buy it and no doubt love it. In my eyes, the woman can do no wrong. I feel like I have been reading her forever and indeed it was with some shock I discovered that her first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack, came
out in 1982. I can’t quite figure that out as I’m sure I wasn’t even born in 1982. I guess I must have been a very early reader.
Anyway, this is only her seventh novel in that 30-year span so it’s a long time between drinks and fans will devour Sex & Stravinsky like a hot buttered
scone because it’s more of what we have been craving.
Short creative type Josh is a South African transplanted to London where he meets and marries tall, practical, beautiful Caroline – a brainy Australian
following her dream of going to Oxford. Caroline can cook, clean, run up a ball gown and teach herself Farsi – the only thing that stops her from being perfect is her hideous mother whose sole purpose in life seems to be sucking the wind out of Caroline’s sails.
Josh and Caroline are both kind, decent, loving, clever people in need of a good slap, if you ask me, and because I trust Barbara Trapido after all these years, I knew she was going to give them one. They’ve both politely abandoned their dreams after all and now there is their ballet-mad daughter, Zoe,
to consider.
Life and lives intersect when past, present and future collide in a family reunion of sorts in South Africa.
No-one, it’s safe to say, will be quite the same again.

[Ella Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and perfectly drawn cast of characters, all connected by this web of relationships. Didn't have quite the same heart as Trapido's other novel 'The Brother of the More Famous Jack', perhaps because it had a slightly sadder tone overall. Still a fab read though.

[A J HOOPER · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always loved Barbara Trapido novels from her very first, Brother of the More Famous Jack. They are a cosy wrapping up of multiple strands to result in what you think is going to be happy ever after yet...they surprise by not ending as fairy story as you suspected.
Sex and Stravinsky is set in South Africa where old lovers remeet, new lovers take off and detestable daughters are abysmally rude to their mothers but fall madly for someone else's. I do wonder if Trapido liked her own parent.
Kicking around the plot is yet another Jack, in this instance a tricky survivor of both neglect and good will. The Liberal Jewish couple that takes Jack in are the good guys here as their equivalents are in other of Trapido's work.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm usually a big fan of Barbara Trapido but this was simply too fanciful. It started off all right but as each new character was introduced and told their story it started to feel like a Shakespearean comedy where everyone comes together at the end and all is sorted. I'm not a fan of farce which this turned into as the plot progressed and even a lover of Suspended Disbelief would struggle with the plot coincidences. Some of the characters were far more interesting than others so I found it annoying to get engaged with a particular personality (e.g. Zoe in France) only to have her disappear completely while more characters' stories were taken up again. Disappointing for me.

[Ceridwyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have always loved Barbara Trapido, but this reads less like a novel and more like a recitation of what is happening in the plot. The narration is so far removed from the characters. It's very much as if the eye of god is slightly sociopathic. For me, this is especially obvious in the race relations elements and the tying up of Gertrude as a loose end on the epilogue made me furious (and remove a star).

[Jenny Dougan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy Barbara Trapido’s books. This was lots of fun with a very neat Shakespearean comedy ending with characters happily changing partners and being linked in so many fairly predictable ways. A good romp!

[B the BookAddict]

Finding the narrative a little too jerky for my taste; it doesn't flow.

[Karen Boalch · Rating 4 out of 5]

became a Shakespearean farce itself!

[Hattie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really charming and fun book, with some utterly loathsome characters. So far in my Barbara Trapido journey, not as good as BOTMFJ but better than TOD. Wasn’t sure whether I should deduct a star for the quite frequent comments about the size of various women, particularly in a bit of a “big=bad, small=good” sense, but then it isn’t an omniscient narrator and what do you expect from the pov of ballet people.
Weirdly there was bit where I’m pretty sure Stravinsky is accidentally called Schoenberg, which is surprising given the title of the book.

Best quotes:
Other than that, there is nothing at all wrong with Janet, except for her markedly less fortunate personality.

'There is sometimes les sangliers,' he says, by way of explanation. 'Pig?' he says, so that Zoe doesn't find out until much later that there are wild boar in the woods, because she's envisaging the odd friendly Gloucester Old Spot pursuing his cultural heritage as he roots for those Gallic truffles that Caroline's told her about.

a low rustic dwelling, dwarfed by a charming topknot of thatch; wild eglantine and beanstalks clawing at tiny leaded windows. And a witch lurking within, bent double over a cauldron.

He left the library wrapped in a cloak of his newly made plural identity. And each element was splashed on it like a bright star on a fabric of inky midnight blue.

a cringeworthy publication of such unbearable homespun smugness that it embarrasses Caroline as a form of emotional bad faith in conjunction with intellectual death.

No one appears conversant with her
mother's medical history, nor with the neurosurgeon's previously stated intentions. The neurosurgeon himself is as if teleported to Planet Zorg.

She knows from all her years of teaching that it's often a lot easier to deal with children who aren't your own

[Therese · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel partly is a comedy of manners, but is also a melancholy retrospective on people without bonds to those around them. I found the changes of tone disconcerting, although they added some power to the story.

As many reviewers here have stated, the ending of the novel, with each pair of incompatible spouses happily finding new partners on the very same day, is both unrealistic and enjoyable. However, the next chapter - the true ending and conclusion of the story - takes up the story of the other characters, and is about sundered relationships, depressing fates, and a one-time pet dog who is left neglected to live life chained up ...

Perhaps the alternation of optimism and despair is part of the South African theme. As one character tells us, early in the novel:

'It's weird, she reflects, a little sadly, that people ... who spent their whole lives working, at great risk to their personal safety, for the kind of social change that the new government now espouses - have either melted into exile, or invisibility, or they've quietly died. And ... yesterday's eager upholders of the apartheid state, are now the best of buddies with the new black elite. But of course. One should have predicted it.'

I agree with Helen Dunmore, describing the final section of the novel:

'Trapido's comedy now carries deep undertones of sadness. Ambitions are thwarted, while dreams wither. The selfish and emotionally rapacious do not redeem themselves, while the innocent retreat, buffeted, to any place of safety they can find.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I settled into this one with high hopes after recently completing this author's wonderful first novel, 'Brother of the More Famous Jack'. The first few chapters were promising, albeit lacking in the flourishes, wonderful dialogue and wholly original whimsy of the predecessor.

Trapido creates very satisfying characters, and she does that again with the highly competent and beautiful Caroline, who marries the slightly nerdish Josh, a Professor of Drama (again, University themes gently woven in). Their life together, and the paradoxes within the marriage, are examined closely, but fissures settle even when Caroline's awful Mother arrives from Australia to stay with them.

From this mildly promising beginning the plot becomes convoluted and head spinningly silly. The ending of star crossed lovers, angsty teenagers, swapped identities, birth mixups and madcap antics late at night were all just too much for this reader.

I will read Trapido again as I have faith that s&s was the anomaly for me.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to try Barbara Trapido after hearing one of her other books reviewed on the radio a few weeks ago but thìs was the only one available in the Library. I was expecting to like it but I was not expecting to Love it! I think I may have found myself a new literary Heroine!

The main action in the novel takes place over about four weeks in 1995 to two seemingly unconnected families from opposite sides of the world. In the telling of this story we are also told how the adults got to this point in 1995 and what their teenage kids think of where they've ended up. (As you can imagine not a lot 😀)

What grabbed me from the first page of this novel was the warm humour and then I was hooked in time for when the plot gets a bit darker and I am rooting for most characters.

I enjoyed this book so much I read it in twelve days!

[Ansie de Swardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read anything by Trapido for a very long while until a friend lent me this. It is very cleverly structured around the format of the Italian 18th century Comedia dell' Arte and specifically, the ballet suite Pulcinella by Stravinsky, based on the famous like-named comedia play. Having just heard our National Youth Orchestra made it very to the point.
One does not have to know this to enjoy the book though. She takes two families, each with many challenges, one in South Africa and the other in the UK, and slowly and skilfully builds the story for their inevitable and life-changing encounter in a hot sub-tropical Durban. Highly recommended.

[Chris Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very pleasant read. The characters are well-drawn, even if they are rather stereotypical. I've never been to Durban, but I live in South Africa now and the descriptions of the places and characters rang true to me.
The ending was rather predictable, but that wasn't too much of a problem, since the story was leaning in the direction of farce by this point in the book.
Happy ending almost all round... and why not? I'd have rather not known about the two cast members (I won't spoil) who didn't get the happy ending. That could've been left unsaid.
Overall, the novel was interesting and undemanding, and that's not a criticism. Sometimes you just want something light to read.

[Paige Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite four coincidences too many, i really rather enjoyed Sex & Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido.

This read has been part of my please-for-the-love-of-christ-get-through-some-of-the-books-that-have-been-on-your-pile-for-over-ten-years campaign. I'm glad I held onto it and I'm glad I read it.

A character-driven family narrative that spans UK, France and Durbs. The characters kept me turning the pages, the kind of character writing I often think about when I'm writing, and wonder what the trick is to getting it right.

Although at some point I wish an editor had said, just watch out for all those coincidences, they make it hard for the reader to fully suspend disbelief.

[Rseymore-Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is well written and the plot unfolds well. Caroline is artistic and creative and solves problems instantly with all her skills. Nothing is too much for her but her mother. She can't stand up to her mom who bullies her. As the story unfolds Caroline has to deal with her life.
The story is well told and skillfully written. This is my second book by this author and somehow her style and tone are not for me.

[Farrah Barber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was recommended this book by an amazing bookshop owner but I just can’t crack it at all. I don’t like Caroline (she’s too confusing of a character for me- her nature is just too contradictory), and I struggle to track the plot. I think the writing style is generally pretty accessible, though, and it’s not a hard read. I like the motif of dance ribboned through. Overall, though, I don’t think it’s for me.

[Daniel Mihai Popescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started it last year, took a rest, then didn't remember who and what. These days I reread it from the beginning, in one go. I cried. It seems I read everything Barbara Trapido has published and I want more. I don't even have a top list of her books. If I ever said I like one more than another, I retract. After reading Sex and Stravinsky I consider it trivial to rate her books less than five stars for each.

[Marie (UK) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't a bad book but I didn't really like any of the characters. Some of the narrative I felt was not really believable. If your daughter is on a school trip, for instance. you would have contact details for teachers etc - the whole "oh i can't get hold of Zoe" was just false and this is simply one example.

[Jenny Steytler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, particularly the settings of apartheid-era South Africa and England. The chance meeting of Caroline and Herman felt a little too coincidental, and their “partner swopping” a little too convenient. Having said that, it’s still an amazing read that kept me turning the pages!

[Zanna Hugo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid read. Well executed plot with, honestly, quite a few boring backstory parts, nevertheless kept me interested to find out what would happen next. End of book neatly tied up with no loose ends, moments of coincidence often leading to sappy, obvious plot twists. Enjoyable, not groundbreaking.