Sex and Stravinsky

Barbara Trapido

An astounding new novel from the bestselling author of Frankie and Stankie and Brother of the More Famous Jack The time is 1995, but everybody is linked by their past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. Josh has bizarre origins in a South African mining town, but now teaches mime in Bristol. Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for ballet lessons; a thing denied her until, on a school French exchange, she meets a runaway boy in a woodland hut. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie Thomas, Josh's first love, has taken to writing girls' ballet books from the turret of her fabulous house – that's when she can carve out the space between the forceful presence of Herman and her crosspatch daughter Cat who, after some illicit snooping,...