The Bronze Trumpeter

It is 1915, and Paolo, the son of a Sicilian nobleman lost in the war, is stranded in a moribund villa, alone but for silent servants, a grief stunned mother, and a sinister governess. In the gardens he discovers the statue of a bronze trumpeter guarding the pathway to a lost theatre drowned in foliage. Then Harlequin and Columbine appear, and the other timeless 'Comedians' of the Italian pantomime, and after a grand, meandering plot, involving vendettas and gun battles and enchantment, they disappear again, and the reader is left so dreamstruck that one almost expects to find the book erasing itself as the last page is finished. First published in 1974 this Smarties Prize winning novel bears evidence of its age in its leisurely pace and somewhat ornate diction. But what a magnificent tale it tells!