The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington is a difficult book for me to recommend—not only because it eludes easy description but because it is so unflinchingly strange that the reader must be willing to relinquish control, to be swept up by the story or be left on its shore scratching their head. You cannot go into this book expecting to "get" it; as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Olga Tokarczuk says in her (incredibly astute) afterward: "From its first sentence on it presents an internally coherent cosmos governed by self-generated laws. In doing so it passes disturbing comment on things we never stop to question."
Yet I highly recommend Carrington’s novel, first published in 1972 and recently re-released by the New York Review Books; it is possibly the funniest book I read last year. Our main character, Marian, is a guileless nonagenarian sent to live out her days in a care home known only as the Institution, "a castle, surrounded by various pavilions with incongruous shapes" (a boot, a toadstool, an Egyptian mummy, a birthday cake).
Now, here comes the bit of the review where I'm meant to sketch out the book's plot. I cannot do that; as I said, it is too difficult to describe. Allow me, instead, a list—in no particular order—of certain characters and plot points: poisoned fudge; an orgiastic abbess; a hunger strike; the Holy Grail; an apocalyptic snowstorm; buried treasure. Throughout, Marian's narration is frank, sincere, and imbued with a self-possession that only comes—I have to hope—with age. It is a mind-bending delight of a tale. If you wish to begin your year with a book that will make you feel intrigued, amused, distressed, and confused—but ultimately absolutely satisfied—I cannot recommend The Hearing Trumpet highly enough.
Emma Nichols co-owns the Norwich Bookstore with her partner, Sam Kaas. When not at the bookstore you’ll most likely find her reading books, baking bread, tinkering with spreadsheets, or pulling tarot cards.