ASUNDAY TIMESBESTSELLER

'What could be more reassuring in troubling times than a new William Boyd novel?'Sunday Telegraph
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A producer. A novelist. An actress.

It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There are riots in Paris and the Vietnam War is out of control. While the world is reeling our three characters are involved in making a Swingin' Sixties movie in sunny Brighton.

All are leading secret lives. Elfrida is drowning her writer's block in vodka; Talbot, coping with the daily dysfunction of making a film, is hiding something in a secret apartment; and the glamorous Anny is wondering why the CIA is suddenly so interested in her.

But the show must go on and, as it does, the trio's private worldsbegin to take over their public ones. Pressures build inexorably - someone's going to crack. Or maybe they all will.

From one of Britain's best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel that asks the vital questions: what makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't?
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'Superbly wry and wise and funny and truthful . .Triois a masterclass in artistic technique'Guardian

'One of our best contemporary storytellers.. .Trioembraces comedy, tragedy and redemption'Spectator

'His best novel in years'Red, The Best Books to Read this October

'Immensely readable . . . full of light and colour, its humour spot on, its mooda perfect mix of frolicsome and melancholy'Sunday Telegraph

'An elating read'Sunday Times

'Beautifully captures the chaos and exhilaration of a shambolic film set'Observer

'As charming as it is satisfying, a pleasure to read'i