11 Stories
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
When Roscoe Jones, a one-time trumpet prodigy, loses his finger, he loses more than his ability to play. Instead of becoming a musician, he becomes the superintendent of the Chicago apartment building where he has lived since birth. Very soon, his life is no longer his own; he fades into the background, plumbing and fixing and toiling for the tenants populating the eleven stories above him. Although they hardly notice him as anything but a working part of the building, he develops a sometimes uncomfortable intimacy with the details of their complicated lives.
Every night, in the privacy of his basement quarters, alone with his secret longings, he plays his trumpet. That is until the evening he climbs to the roof to play in public for the first time in fifty years — and the course of his life is irrevocably changed.
For some, losses may turn, unexpectedly, to gain. For Roscoe, the relationships he forms with the tenants — two, in particular — justify the amputation of his finger and the forfeiture of his dreams. This is a story about sacrifice and service, longing and love — and the abiding hopefulness of the human heart that connects us all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cander explores isolation and communication in this elusive but engaging portrayal of the life and death of Roscoe Jones, a 67-year-old Chicago apartment building superintendent. A former trumpet prodigy who lives an anonymous life, Roscoe falls to his death one evening from the roof of his building. Cander infuses Roscoe's reflections while plunging 11 stories with an abundance of realistic detail from which her portrait of an isolated but dedicated man emerges. As Roscoe's concerns expand from his trumpet and apartment to the sufferings of his building's tenants, he is impelled to extend compassion, feel pity, and to encounter love. The recurrent image of broken sidewalk slabs provides an unobtrusive metaphor for the hidden afflictions with which all people contend. Cander suggests that Roscoe's finding peace through friendship is a human necessity. Her conclusion provides grounds for belief in the possibility of redemption; her sensitivity ensures that this novel will appeal to anyone with a story to tell, a group that includes us all.
