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Neate, Patrick Twelve Bar Blues ISBN 13: 9780802117274

Twelve Bar Blues - Hardcover

 
9780802117274: Twelve Bar Blues
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Lick Holden, a talented but tormented young coronet player, sets out to conquer the steaming jazz scene of early twentieth-century New Orleans, in a lively novel that won the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award.

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Review:
Patrick Neate's second novel, Twelve Bar Blues, is a bouncy, ebullient book, "populated" (as one of its cast reflects midway through), "by absurd characters, dead ends and half truths" that tumbles "toward a punch-line that would seem inevitable with hindsight". It positively brims with outlandish, hilarious and moving (if occasionally hokey) tales. Literally "every name's got a story" and by jingo Neate delights in spinning each part of his yarn. Roaming through the black slums and early jazz joints of the Louisiana bayou to Africa, London, New York, Chicago and New Orleans at the end of the 20th century, his vista is extraordinary. There's Tongo Kalulu, the chief of the Zimindo, a proud African tribe, who, confused by his wife and enraptured by an attractive female American archaeologist, seeks the advice of Musa, his sex-obsessed witch doctor. There's Sylvia di Napoli, a "coffee-coloured" retired London prostitute, who has travelled to America in the hope of discovering her real father¹s identity. Also along for the ride is Jim Tulloch, a scruffy, big-hearted young Englishman half her age. Gluing these seemingly disparate elements together is the tragic love story of Fortis James "Lick" Holden, a long forgotten Louisiana jazzman who allegedly taught Louis "Dipper" Armstrong the "meanin' of the word hot" and Sylvie Black, his prostitute "sister (who wasn't no blood relation)". Chock full of jazz, poverty, sex and death, this enjoyable novel jives to a note-perfect if predictable ending, dispensing intelligent critiques of racism and sexism along the way. --Travis Elborough
Review:
"Tale spinners, yarn weavers and myth makers are sprinkled like cayenne pepper on a Crescent City crawfish plate throughout Twelve Bar Blues, an atmospheric, expertly layered piece of literary fiction."

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  • PublisherGrove Pr
  • Publication date2002
  • ISBN 10 0802117279
  • ISBN 13 9780802117274
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages416
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780140286564: Twelve Bar Blues

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780140286564
Publisher: Penguin, 2002
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  • 9780802140562: Twelve Bar Blues

    Grove ..., 2004
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  • 9780670887910: Twelve Bar Blues

    Viking, 2001
    Softcover

  • 9783807701486: Twelve Bar Blues

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