How long does it take to read Trumpet?
Jackie Kay
Trumpet by Jackie Kay takes about 5 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 6 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1998. 278 pages, about 76,450 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 30 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 11 minutes |
The page count is the median across 12 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
At its center is Joss Moody, a celebrated jazz trumpeter who created music that convinced everyone who heard it that they knew the man who made it. But Joss's death has proved them all wrong: Joss Moody lived his life inside a stunning secret. His wife, Millie, had known about it. But their adopted son, Colman, now in his thirties, has just learned of it. With everything he understood about himself and his family thrown into question, Colman forms an uncomfortable alliance with a journalist intent on telling Joss's story her own way. Millie, grieving and besieged by the press, secludes herself in their home in a small Scottish village, sinking into the aching solace of memory. Their two brilliantly realized voices -- one revisiting the past for comfort, the other for answers -- are interwoven with the equally evocative voices of Joss's drummer, of the doctor who discovered Joss's secret, of the funeral director who hid it for the last time, of the registrar of death certificates, and of the journalist. Together they reveal the startling and poignant story of Joss and Millie: how a complex, dazzling lie became the foundation for a family, a life, and a rare, unshakable love.
Subjects: Jazz musicians, Fiction, Fiction, general, Transvestites, Blacks, Trumpet players