'What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?' Joe Trace - in his
fifties door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products erstwhile devoted husband - shoots
dead his lover of three months the impetuous eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral his
determined hard-working wife Violet who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks tries
with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound Jazz brings us back and forth in
time in a narrative assembled from the hopes fears and realities of black urban life. VINTAGE
DECO: Nine blazing daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on.
