Trio: (Salt Modern Fiction)

Northumberland: the winter of 1937. In a remote moorland cottage, Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, is filled with sadness and longing 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 gradually under their spell. But as war approaches a decision is made which calls all their lives quite shockingly into question. Moving between the beauty and isolation of the moors, a hill-town school and a graceful old country house, Trio delicately explores conscience and idealism, romantic love and most painful desire. Throughout it all, the power of music to disturb, uplift and affirm is unforgettably evoked.

About the Author :
Sue Gee is an acclaimed and established novelist. Reading in Bed, (2007) was a Daily Mail Book Club selection; The Mysteries of Glass (2005) was long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She ran the MA Creative Writing Programme at Middlesex University from 2000-2008 and currently teaches at the Faber Academy. Sue Gee has also published many short stories, some of which, like her play, Ancient & Modern (2004) have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She lives in London and Herefordshire.

Review :
The elegance with which Gee orchestrates these elements is what makes Trio such a gentle read, both heartwarming and heart-wrenching in equal measure. The focus on those universal experiences of love and grief transcend its period setting to produce something deeply human. Threading its way through each of the big themes of the novel, music is an ever-present force. On one level, the trio referred to in the title are Margot and the other two musicians with whom she regularly plays in concerts and recitals. Gee’s accounts of music and the effect that it has on its listeners are magnificent: Steven comes from a totally non-musical family, and his awakening upon listening to the trio to the power and pleasures of music are masterfully evoked. A beautiful work of literary fiction, it’s full of originality … Trio is difficult to put down. It’s a gorgeous escape back in time that for all its – needed – sadness, is gripping. This is a gentle book … rich in atmosphere. Gee writes with great feeling about the natural world and the music that, for her characters, holds so much significance. Trio is a book that rewards your careful attention; you will probably, if you are like me, want to gobble it up, but its observation of human behaviour, of the fault lines of friendships and the limitations of love, is of the subtlest sort. Its generous anatomization of grief and fallibility, and the immense trust it places in the power of music, has earned it a spot on my shelf of Books To Save From Fire. This summer, you really should be reading it too. This is a novel about the power of classical music to reach us and to heal us. A love story of two kindred spirits unfolds … They write letters — letters! I had forgotten how exciting love letters could be. [T]he beautifully evoked late-1930s atmosphere is thrown into relief in the last section of the book. With her finely tuned ear for both language and music, the author brings us powerfully into the world of this generation as well as the last. During her lengthy writing career, Sue Gee has garnered a breadth of acclaim that encompasses the Romantic Novel of the Year award for Hours of the Night and an Orange Prize longlisting for The Mysteries of Glass. In Trio, her tenth novel, she once again explores what she does best: the relationship between community and the lonely interior world of the human spirit. ★★★★ 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. Trio exhibits all Sue Gee's hallmarks – an unhurried narrative, measured handling of material, particularly of the story's emotional substrate, a calmness and restraint in plotting, beautifully drawn characters, and a feel for place such that she could be called a landscape artist with words … But as I've said above there's so much more than that to Trio, and I can't recommend it too highly. Sue Gee is a writer of clarity and quality, a Bawden or Ravilious, a Reynolds Stone or Clare Leighton of prose, and reading her work is pure pleasure. ★★★★ I was deeply moved by its storytelling. It really seemed to embody grief, to demonstrate its impact, and to consider the questions of how we move on after losing those we love. It is a book I will return to again and again. I can't remember when I last enjoyed a book as much as this. I got it from the library a couple of days ago, in a mad dash just before closing time – started it after dinner – and regretfully turned out the light with throbbing eyes at 5am and realised I had read the night away.