Product Description

The Hearing Trumpet is the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that what her family is saying is that she is to be committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and where the gateway to the underworld is open. It is also the scene of a mysterious murder. Occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, The Hearing Trumpet is a classic of fantastic literature that has been translated and celebrated throughout the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88134 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Library Journal
"A strange and wonderful novel… this book is a masterpiece of Surrealistic fantasy, combining rich symbolic suggestion with a gripping narrative."

About the Author
Leonora Carrington is a British born Surrealist painter and writer now living in Mexico city who has been described, alongside people such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, as one of the leading lights of the Surrealist movement. Born in Lancashire in 1917 to a strict Catholic family she first came into contact with surrealism through her lover, Surrealist painter Max Ernst, before moving to Mexico in 1942. The Hearing Trumpet, her most famous piece of writing, was first published in France in 1974. Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and now lives in Cambridge. Her first book, Free Love, won the Saltire First Book Award. Her most recent novel, Hotel World, was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002.

Customer Reviews

The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington
Wonderful. A fantastical, surreal fable that begins when a 92 year old lady is given a hearing trumpet by a friend and then overhears her family planning to dump her in an old people's home. Off she goes to a home where a collection of old women live variously in shoes, mushrooms and towers, and they are at the will of Dr Gambit, a man who preaches that they must discover inner Christianity during their stay. This, and what follows, is a hilarious, surreal, illuminating and quietly philosophical tale, the most obvious (and possibly least important) themes of which are age and perception. It's heart-warming, eccentric, and makes you glad to be alive. It turns into a stranger tale than I was expecting it to, but I would wholeheartedly recommend this: a unique and piercing little piece of fiction.

Old Ladies, the Apocalypse(?), and Death by Chocolate!!!
The Hearing Trumpet is deliciously funny and irreverent; Surrealist painter/author Leonora Carrington's apocalyptic tale is filled with gems such as "Darling, don't be philosophical, it doesn't suit you, it makes your nose red." Filtered through the eyes and ears of Marian Leatherby, a 92 year-old inmate of a Spanish old folk's home (run by the cultlike Well of Light Brotherhood), the tongue-in-cheek tone and hilarious chracters make this book a refreshing surprise. Every copy I've ever owned has been stolen! From the first paragraph, the reader will see that Marian Leatherby and her friends are NOT LOL's (Little Old Ladies), and Leonora Carrington is not your average author. (She's truly hilarious, for one!) Read this book for its wacky imagery (a trompe l'oeil "furnished" tower, a pair of murdering religious quacks, termite engineering, wigs, marijuana-stuffed needlepoint pillows, and a 92 year-old lady swarming down ten stories of rope, for starters), then hide your copy from your well-read friends...or buy them their own!

The Hearing Trumpet
Marian Leatherby, a 92 year old, not quite antiquated woman. Is given a gift of a hearing trumpet, only to uncover her scheming family have every intention of committing her to an institution for elderly ladies. It takes a considerable amount of coercion but Marian packs her bags and leaves her beloved cats with a close friend. Nevertheless the institution is no coventional one, by any means. The buildings are shaped like lighthouses and birthday cakes, the portrait of a winking abbess has a strange and secretive connection to the institution and the women who live there, and who is the woman in the tower? Read this book and be taken on copious amusing, mystical and extremely surreal adventures. Encounter the king of the wolves, the queen bee and many more fantastical creatures. It really is a truely wonderful book, I urge you to read this.