This is a beautifully written and moving account of loss and grief that spans two generations. Perhaps unusually, it's a perceptive study of how a widower copes with bereavement rather than the more usual topic of the widow's response to the death of the spouse. The landscape and natural world of southern Northumberland are evoked vividly and precisely. Its society in the 1930s is brought to life across the span from the wealthy to the poor with great conviction. The way in which the harshness of two wars and the diseases of poverty are faced by the author is just one of the elements that makes this novel so affecting. -- Charles Palliser Trio is a gentle, elegiac meditation on grief, carved into the bleak, rugged moorland of Northumberland, anchored firmly in a rich, ever-changing landscape. Sue Gee writes with perception about the healing power of music, setting the history of an ancient land into the context of a modern world, making sense of the inevitable sad passage of time. The enduring strength of love and family forms a fragile but supple backbone to the novel, maintaining its power in the face of looming cataclysmic world events. A book to be read carefully and savoured. -- Clare Morrall
Sue Gee is an acclaimed and established novelist. Reading in Bed, (2007) was a Daily Mail Book Club selection; The Mysteries of Glass (2005) was long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She ran the MA Creative Writing Programme at Middlesex University from 2000-2008 and currently teaches at the Faber Academy. Sue Gee has also published many short stories, some of which, like her play, Ancient & Modern (2004) have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She lives in London and Herefordshire.
The elegance with which Gee orchestrates these elements is what
makes Trio such a gentle read, both heartwarming and
heart-wrenching in equal measure. The focus on those universal
experiences of love and grief transcend its period setting to
produce something deeply human.
*Film and Other Assorted Buffery*
Threading its way through each of the big themes of the novel,
music is an ever-present force. On one level, the trio referred to
in the title are Margot and the other two musicians with whom she
regularly plays in concerts and recitals. Gee’s accounts of music
and the effect that it has on its listeners are magnificent: Steven
comes from a totally non-musical family, and his awakening upon
listening to the trio to the power and pleasures of music are
masterfully evoked.
*Christina James*
A beautiful work of literary fiction, it’s full of originality …
Trio is difficult to put down. It’s a gorgeous escape back in time
that for all its – needed – sadness, is gripping.
*The Worm Hole*
This is a gentle book … rich in atmosphere. Gee writes with great
feeling about the natural world and the music that, for her
characters, holds so much significance.
*Daily Mail*
Trio is a book that rewards your careful attention; you will
probably, if you are like me, want to gobble it up, but its
observation of human behaviour, of the fault lines of friendships
and the limitations of love, is of the subtlest sort. Its generous
anatomization of grief and fallibility, and the immense trust it
places in the power of music, has earned it a spot on my shelf of
Books To Save From Fire. This summer, you really should be reading
it too.
*Elle Thinks*
This is a novel about the power of classical music to reach us and
to heal us. A love story of two kindred spirits unfolds … They
write letters — letters! I had forgotten how exciting love letters
could be. [T]he beautifully evoked late-1930s atmosphere is thrown
into relief in the last section of the book. With her finely tuned
ear for both language and music, the author brings us powerfully
into the world of this generation as well as the last.
*Country Life*
During her lengthy writing career, Sue Gee has garnered a breadth
of acclaim that encompasses the Romantic Novel of the Year award
for Hours of the Night and an Orange Prize longlisting for The
Mysteries of Glass. In Trio, her tenth novel, she once again
explores what she does best: the relationship between community and
the lonely interior world of the human spirit.
*Bookoxygen*
★★★★ Sue Gee's tenth novel is a sensitive portrait of life's
transience and the things that give us purpose. In the late 1930s,
a widowed history teacher in Northumberland finds a new lease on
life when he falls for one of the members of a local trio of
musicians.
*The Bookbag*
Trio exhibits all Sue Gee's hallmarks – an unhurried narrative,
measured handling of material, particularly of the story's
emotional substrate, a calmness and restraint in plotting,
beautifully drawn characters, and a feel for place such that she
could be called a landscape artist with words … But as I've said
above there's so much more than that to Trio, and I can't recommend
it too highly. Sue Gee is a writer of clarity and quality, a Bawden
or Ravilious, a Reynolds Stone or Clare Leighton of prose, and
reading her work is pure pleasure.
*Cornflower Books*
★★★★ I was deeply moved by its storytelling. It really seemed to
embody grief, to demonstrate its impact, and to consider the
questions of how we move on after losing those we love. It is a
book I will return to again and again.
*Joy Isabella*
I can't remember when I last enjoyed a book as much as this. I got
it from the library a couple of days ago, in a mad dash just before
closing time – started it after dinner – and regretfully turned out
the light with throbbing eyes at 5am and realised I had read the
night away.
*Mrs Miniver’s Daughter*
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