By Patrick Neate



I met Patrick Neate at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. He was a guest director of the event and I (perhaps rudely) asked him to list the novels he had written. He was not the least bothered that I did not realise he won, in 2001, the Whitbread Novel Award with Twelve Bar Blues and instead spoke engagingly of his work and how winning the award had made a huge difference to his life as a novelist.

The book is about black music and, like the best jazz and blues, it sweeps you off your feet. It begins in 1790 with a tale of betrayal, witch doctors and soulful singing in Africa. It moves on to a century later and the birth of Lick Holden, the central character, in Louisiana. There is poverty, racism and cruelty but Neate blasts a loud and vibrant trumpet over all of it to keep this an uplifting story.

The key questions

How does Neate convey through words the sounds of jazz?
Neate takes us to three continents; is the novel too sweeping?
Is the author overly enthusiastic?
Which of the vibrant peripheral characters stand out?

The part of the tale relating Lick's life from youngest child in a large poor family to successful blues horn player is delivered in the snappy, drawling black vernacular of the time, and is full of warmth, wicked humour, family sagas and almost audible tones of sweet jazz and blues. The African strands of the novel, about the chief Tongo and his naughty witchdoctor Musa, are entertaining in the same easy and delightful way as Alexander McCall Smith's Number One Ladies' Detective Agency stories. And the contemporary thread about Sylvia is engrossing and fascinating. The whole is a vivacious, warm novel packed with life and soul.

Leyla Sanai, Glasgow, Scotland

An impressive novel. Entertaining throughout, it is much more than just a story of black music, although the trumpet playing of Lick Holden is paramount. Patrick Neate conveys the sounds of jazz by vividly describing the emotions felt by the player and the audience, and by his colourful descriptions of the marching bands and jazz dens of New Orleans. References to musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday add to the authenticity. Of the numerous and interesting peripheral characters, I particularly liked "Reverend Joseph T.Jackson the third", the Lexus driving pastor. He was very funny, even in a dangerous, tense, situation. Brilliantly written. I did not find the book too sweeping but it would have been clearer had it been more chronological.

Brian Ashworth, Burnley, England

I found this a difficult book to get into at first but I was reading whilst travelling which is not good for concentration. Once I did though it captured me and I was disappointed when I got to the end. The finish was done very well as it was not a typical climax or resolution (although much had been resolved) but part of the continuing story moving forward. Excellent.

John Avery, York, UK

A hugely original, multi-stranded, stirring tale of love and loss and survival in a harsh world of exclusion and division, which takes jazz as the starting point for a study of fluid identity, interpretation, culture, roots and history. It asks whether it is possible to escape our birth and background, as the old clashes with the new and one culture imposes its values upon another. I felt the book could comfortably have been 50 pages shorter, since it does seem to lose a little impetus towards the end. However, the portrayal of characters, both real and imaginary, is vivid and credible and the evocation of likeably seedy jazz venues in New Orleans is expert. I have had Patrick Neate's "London Pigeon Wars" on my TBR pile for some time; this made me think it was finally time I read it. On a grumpy old man note, why do so many books seem to be littered with proof-reading errors these days? Surely a publisher of the standing of Penguin is not cutting corners on production?

Glyn Haggett, Milton Keynes, UK

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