Trio
A novel
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3.9 • 35 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
It’s summer 1968, and the world is reeling from war and assassinations, protests and riots. In a sunny British seaside town, a producer, a novelist, and an actress are enduring their own more private crises on the set of a disaster-plagued movie. All are leading secret lives—one is in the closet; another is an alcoholic; and the third is sleeping with her costar—and as the shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably—and that’s before the FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack—or maybe they all will. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Trio is an enthralling novel that asks the vital questions: What makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn’t?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lives of a film producer, an actor, and a novelist converge during an ill-fated movie shoot in Boyd's madcap 16th novel (after Love Is Blind). It is 1968 and the very British Talbot Kydd is in Brighton overseeing the production. His leading lady is American ingenue Anny Viklund, and the movie is directed by the pretentious, unfaithful husband of famous writer Elfrida Wing. Talbot, secretly gay, constantly puts out fires on and off the movie set. Anny has been extorted by her terrorist ex-husband who has recently escaped from prison. And Elfrida is a raging alcoholic who can't get past the first, terrible, paragraph of her new book. As Boyd expertly unfolds his characters' stories, philosophical questions emerge: where does each of these individuals belong in history, and must they play the part expected of them? Filled with outlandish and amusing characters, including predatory talent agents and a pornography-peddling has-been actor, Boyd's novel offers its heroes paths to escape their burdens, some of which are a bit implausible, but all are fun to watch. Boyd is an exquisite stylist, and his tragicomic novel is a sublime escape.
