Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan is the fifth of the Booker Shortlist that I've read, and unfortunately turned out to be the one I enjoyed the least. The premise is intriguing – has it ever occurred to you to wonder about the fate of black German jazz musicians in Europe during the period of the Second World War? Nope, me neither, but that's the subject here. German-born Hieronymous Falk has a God-given talent with the trumpet that is appreciated and envied by fellow bandmates Sid Griffiths, and Chip Jones, two African-Americans living in Berlin. When life grows too dangerous under the Nazis the band flee to Paris. Sid meanwhile has an on-off relationship with femme-fatale Delilah, who puts the group in touch with Louis Armstrong in order to make a record. Sidelined from the recording and jealous of Delilah's emotional connection with Hiero, Sid takes an opportunity to get his revenge.
It is many years before Sid is able to confess, and maybe earn forgiveness for the guilty secret that he has been harbouring. But unlike Eli Sisters, the antihero of fellow Booker nominee The Sisters Brothers, Sid is a character I found it hard to empathize with or like, and ultimately I didn't care whether he was eventually forgiven or not. Hiero was a more intriguing figure, but he remains frustratingly elusive throughout the book. I did like Sid's passion for jazz – not really something I know much about, so I enjoyed the descriptions and learning a little bit about the culture of jazz music. I liked it when Sid was inside the music looking out, so to speak. But I found the slang used by all the characters unconvincing ('We talked like mongrels, see – half-German, half-Baltimore bar slang' Sid explains), and more seriously I had the problem that all the different characters sounded the same, so I didn't get much of a sense of them as individuals. It's a shame; there were odd sentences in this novel that were beautiful and moving, but overall I read it very much with a sense of duty rather than pleasure.
I like the version of the cover I found online that I've used above, but sadly that's not the one we're going to see in the shops. We'll get this, instead.
