conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The Travelling Hornplayer about Jonathan's, Sonia, Alice with the genre: Literature & Fiction, British & Irish?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author's golden novel about loss is an Alice in Wonderland for grownups. From its haunting start--"Early on in the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister"--to its final, endless irony, The Travelling Hornplayer zips with plot twists and character turns, shocking revelations and desperate reactions. Any attempt at summary is dizzying, but here are a few hints: for three years, Ellen Dent has been devastated by the loss of her younger sister, who had struck famous novelist Jonathan Goldman as having "the pleasing air of one who plans to easily pass through this life, collecting admirers at tennis parties." Nonetheless, Lydia's charmed teenage existence had come to a quick end, courtesy of a car, outside Jonathan's North London flat after his daughter, Stella, turned her away, mistaking her for his mistress, Sonia. Sonia herself will later crop up in the Cotswolds as the temporary lodger of Jonathan's beloved wife--and I won't even begin to unravel Stella's super-disconcerting tale. I will, however, say that the book contains several other matchless, larger-than-life characters and strands, which mesh together into a sparky, tragicomic puzzle.