As much as I enjoyed most of Jackie Kay’s other work, Trumpet didn’t work for me. Over a year after reading it, most I recall is that Joss Moody—a recently deceased trans man leaving behind a wife and adult child—is treated as a freak show, frequently misgendered and called the t-slur post mortem. His being trans had to be kept secret and—gasp—upon his death it is revealed that he was “actually a woman”. Yikes. Except for his wife, who is genuinely grieving, everyone else, including his son, hones in on how Joss’s trans identity bothers and inconveniences them. As if they (first and foremost his son) had been lied to all their life.

Listen. I give Jackie Kay the benefit of the doubt. She’s a fantastic writer, queer herself, and I reckon the point of this book is to criticise the mistreatment of Joss. That, and the novel is from the 90s, and sensitive language for trans people wasn’t established then. Still, not Kay’s best by far, and the constant misgendering and the many t-slurs did take a toll on me.