An exquisite 40th anniversary edition of a coming-of-age classic: ‘there are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one’ (Rachel Cusk)
Barbara Trapido was born in South Africa and is the author of seven novels - Brother of the More Famous Jack (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction), Noah's Ark, Temples of Delight (shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Juggling, The Travelling Hornplayer (shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award), Frankie and Stankie (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award) and Dancing With Stravinsky. She lives in Oxford.
The fiction equivalent of a brisk walk followed by a hot buttered
crumpet: fresh, invigorating, comforting and heartening
*SUNDAY TELEGRAPH*
Few writers give more pleasure and joy to their readers. Trapido
has such a gift for seeing the world’s weight so clearly and
writing about it so lightly
*KAMILA SHAMSIE*
It is the perfect book. Beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and
utterly ageless. The first time I read it, I knew within pages that
Brother of the More Famous Jack was going to become my favourite
novel. The second time, that this brilliant, funny, intensely
moving work is everything I aspire to as a writer. Every reading
since, that devotion to Barbara Trapido is my only true requisite
in a friend
*MEG MASON*
Can we talk about Barbara Trapido? I love those books so much … So
charming, they’re absolutely gorgeous. For me, reading Barbara
Trapido is like entering a entirely different world … I’d recommend
everyone read Brother of the More Famous Jack
*MARIAN KEYES*
Still as fresh and funny after all those years; the perfect
coming-of-age novel
*CLARE CHAMBERS*
Why did it take me so long to discover the singular joys of Barbara
Trapido's novels? Why, for so many years, had I missed these witty,
soulful, heartbreaking, expansive, brilliant tales? What have I
been wasting my time doing? Reading books that AREN'T perfect?
Never again!
*ELIZABETH GILBERT*
I am wildly jealous of anyone who hasn’t yet read Barbara Trapido.
They have yet to discover the joy of her often hilarious and always
profound world; they are about to meet her intricate cast of
recurring characters; they will soon have those glorious moments of
Trapidean epiphany when they realise – oh! – the boy in this book
is the child of a woman in that book. There is no-one like Barbara.
Buy all her books, quick, and then sit back, crack the spines, and
prepare to marvel
*MAGGIE O'FARRELL*
Brother of the More Famous Jack is the book we need right now:
smart, funny, honest, painful and true. It is the best possible
company as we make our way through this difficult world. I love
it
*ANN PATCHETT*
A moving, intense, earthy and witty book, both illuminating and
extraordinary as a first novel
*THE TIMES*
She is a writer I feel genuinely evangelical about, and I think
she's criminally underread. I'd honestly go to Speaker's Corner and
stand on a box and read out passages from Brother of the More
Famous Jack, such is my love for it
*DAISY BUCHANAN*
The exuberance, the humour, the gritty toughness and the sadness
... I really love the way she writes
*MIRIAM TOEWS*
I adored Brother of the More Famous Jack. It is redolent of
classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and
wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine
*SOPHIE DAHL*
Brother of the More Famous Jack is one of the funniest, warmest,
sexiest, sharpest novels I’ve ever read. I must have read it a
dozen times: I turn to it whenever the world seems drear, for it
has such light and such joy in it
*KATHERINE RUNDELL*
Its high spirits are irresistible … the heroine is unstoppable
*SUNDAY TELEGRAPH*
Perfect characters and dialogue - the most satisfying book I've
ever read
*RED*
A story, like Mansfield Park, of falling in love with a whole
family
*SPECTATOR*
The style is hectic and passionate, the jokes thick and fast, the
emotions full and right, the humanity total and engulfing ... a
first fruit to savour and exalt
*THE TIMES*
A very funny book ... A complex and highly polished work ...
Barbara Trapido has that rare ability to make her characters
respond to small misfortunes and irritations exactly as people
do
*NEW YORK TIMES*
I've given ... Brother of the More Famous Jack to dozens of people,
and like me, they fall rapturously in love with Trapido's breezy,
raunchy and unsentimental style
*NEW YORK TIMES*
A sort of bohemian Brideshead Revisited
*TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*
Very funny, very English, very sad
*DAILY TELEGRAPH*
A highly promising debut – fast, inventive, funny
*LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS*
This is a first novel ... but if established writers could get this
good on the seventh try, readers would be the richer for it ...
What a lovely novel – charming, intelligent and a happy ending too.
Barbara Trapido, where have you been?
*USA TODAY*
If you've been looking for a modern love story that shines with
off-beat charm and sprightly intelligence – not to mention elegance
of style – take heart ... This brief account cannot do justice to
the wry, civilized tone and understated wit that lights up
Trapido’s writing
*SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE*
A pleasure … full of excellent things, enormously exuberant,
carried along for the most part on vivid dialogue for which Ms
Trapido has an uncannily perceptive ear
*EVENING STANDARD*
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