I am of two minds about TRUMPET, an acclaimed first novel by a Scottish author named Jackie Kay. Clearly inspired by the life of the late jazz musician, Billy Tipton, this is a disarming, involving and frustrating story.

Tipton, you might recall, was the drummer who, in death, was revealed to be a woman. Tipton had passed for all of his/her adult life - and the coroner's report inspired headlines throughout the world.

Ms. Kay's novel is not unlike that saga, and she successfully probes the lives of the survivors and how they were able to handle the posthumous revelations. Joss Moody, the musician in TRUMPET, had a long and loving marriage, but unlike the naive central figure in "M. Butterfly," the widow knew since early in their relationship that her husband was a biological woman. That she loved him was all that mattered to her.

My frustration is not with Ms. Kay, but I have an increasing impatience with people, like many of the characters in TRUMPET, who are so concerned about the private lives of other people, often folks they don't even know.

Joss Moody's son, upon learning that his father was a woman, is more concerned with what strangers think than with a lifetime of love and devotion he received from his dad. Part of the book's triumph is charting the son's transition.

A journalist threatens to write a rush biography of Joss Moody, relying on the public's endless fascination with the personal and sexual lives of other people. And that is my frustration and annoyance. When does that abyss of prurient interest get exhausted? The tabloids and Matt Drudges of the world seem to have a bottomless pit of curiosity. They want to shock us about the great variance of the human experience. It is almost fascistic because the implication is that we should all be the same. Hitler's Children, so to speak - crew-cutted, blond men and perky June Allyson/Sandra Dee-ish women, whose behavior is defined by people usually named Pat (Buchanan or Robertson)

So TRUMPET is one more story, tabloid inspired, of a woman who lived as a man. Ms. Kay has done a wonderful job in jabbing my ribs to the point that I wanted to yell at the characters in her book "Leave him alone and mind your own business." At one point, the exploitive journalist in Ms. Kay's novel notes that the 90's are obsessed with sex, infidelity, scandal, sleeze and perverts. Considering what this country has been obsessed with - OJ, Princess Di, Monica and The President - that pretty well sums up a pathetic decade.