Love & Fame

Product Description Susie Boyt's sixth novel is the story of the first year of a marriage. Eve a nervous young actress from a powerful theatrical dynasty has found herself married to an international expert on anxiety called Jim. Could it work? Should it work? Must the show always go on? This is a highly-strung comedy about love, fame, grief, showbusiness and the depths of the gutter press. Its witty and sincere tone - familiar to fans of Susie's newspaper column - will delight and unnerve in equal measure. Review I so loved this novel, its originality leaps off the page and it made me laugh out loud. Seldom has an exploration of raw, profound grief been so entertaining (Deborah Moggach) This is delightful and as tender as an accidental bruise. Boyt's witty, zingy, ping-pong dialogue dances with Astaire-like flair - underneath it lies the darker depths of grief that threaten to draw all her characters down into the murky waters of loss. I found myself praying that the cork floats of hope were still firmly attached (Tamsin Greig) Susie Boyt has a unique perspective on modern life and close relationships, she is one of the funniest and most individual writers working today (Linda Grant) Love & Fame is so rich and insightful, and the writing is beautiful. Reading it will help you survive your own personality. There's a special sort of merriment in the book and such a feast of particularity (Andrew O'Hagan) A book that manages to be both clever AND cheerful! Who knows if you're allowed to fall in love with characters in books any more (or again) but Eve is the most loveable heroine who has walked across the stage of English fiction for a long while. Delivered with wit and brilliance leavened with a sense of tragedy just off stage (Alain De Botton) [Boyt] is a ruthless skewerer of banalities and platitudes . . . Boyt tackles life's knottier questions - is it better to fight, or to respect, one's feelings? Can suffering be improving? - with feeling and verve (Stephanie Cross Daily Mail) Blissfully immersive fiction . . . extremely funny, with a brilliant ear for zippy dialogue and an eagle eye for delusional egotistical fops (Jane Graham Big Issue) Boyt's affection for her characters warms every page . . . she writes with such precision and wisdom about the human heart under duress that the novel is hard to resist (Leaf Arbuthnot Sunday Times) Insightful . . . a sharp, universal must-read ( Emerald Street) Boyt's affection for her characters warms every page . . . she writes with such precision and wisdom about the human heart under duress that the novel is hard to resist ( Sunday Times) The book is strewn with scenes of domestic intimacy. Boyt manages them with freshness and ease, filling them with the casual, affectionate mental shorthand and common points of reference that families share: jokes, people, or just a cat's demeanour. The sentences flip in unexpected ways, pitch perfect . . . sort of high-wire feat, a comedy about grief, loss and love in which the author doesn't put a foot wrong ( Literary Review) This is a clever, wise, often sad book . . . Boyt is fiercely funny (Laura Freeman Spectator) Boyt's trick is to turn all of this into something surprisingly breezy, as witty as it is raw (Stephanie Cross Daily Mail) Boyt skilfully manages the delicate task of unpicking her characters' internal hopes, fears and sorrows without over analysing them. It would be easy for this novel to wallow in bleakness, given the subject matter. But perhaps precisely because of this, Boyt's humour shines through (Zoë Apostolides Financial Times) Susie Boyt's quietly elegant prose tackles the most grievous of themes - suicide, eating disorders and mental illness - with the most tender of touches (Eithne Farry Sunday Express) She writes sentences with the nuance of a playful Henry James, exploring grief with wit and wisdom (Linda Grant Observer) A funny and tender love story (Sebastian Shakespeare Tatler) A w