Review: 'The Moment Of Truth' By Damian McNicholl
When I began writing my last novel — about a young woman playing trumpet in the male-dominated world of jazz — I wondered whether I, a man, could create an authentic and memorable female protagonist. For inspiration I read James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good. I wish I’d also been able to read Damian McNicholl’s The Moment of Truth.
This tale of Kathleen Boyd daring to become a bullfighter in Mexico in the 1950s delivers many moments of truth — the emotional truth of Kathleen’s coming of age against her narrow options, the political truth about the price she pays for challenging convention, and the literary truth of a character who transcends the time and place and circumstances of her story.
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