Trio: A Novel

Written by William Boyd

Narrated by Imani Jade Powers

A rollicking novel with a dark undertow, set around three unforgettable individuals and a doomed movie set—from the award-winning, best-selling author of Any Human Heart

A producer. A novelist. An actress. It's summer 1968—a time of war and assassinations, protests and riots. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a disaster-plagued, Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the movie shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably. The FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack—or maybe they all will. From one of Britain's best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel—by turns hilarious and heartbreaking—that asks the vital questions: What makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593349076

William Boyd

William Boyd, 1952 als Sohn schottischer Eltern in Ghana geboren, ist dort und in Nigeria aufgewachsen, bevor er in Großbritannien zur Schule ging und studierte. Dass er sich in keiner Kultur ganz zu Hause fühlt, sei für einen Schriftsteller eine gute Voraussetzung, sagt Boyd. Seinen ersten Roman veröffentlichte er 1981, heute gilt er als einer der bedeutendsten und erfolgreichsten Erzähler der zeitgenössischen Literatur. William Boyd lebt mit seiner Frau in London und im südfranzösischen Bergerac, wo er auch Wein anbaut. Wo immer er sich gerade aufhält – er geht für sein Leben gern spazieren.

Reviews for Trio

[steve38 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A well constructed tale of lives disintegrating and coming back together on a film set in Brighton in 1968. The period background is lightly but effectively done. With an experienced author such as Mr Boyd as you might expect the plot lines are well constructed, the writing is simple and efficient, nothing out of place and nothing over done. He makes it all seem easy. But that's the trick isn't it.

[janismack · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Story of the characters involved in the production of a film in Brighton England. Quick read, characters were complicated and sad.

[davidroche_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Trio (Penguin), by William Boyd is the story of three people on a film set in Brighton in the late 1960s. The trio of the title are the female lead – a Hollywood star, who is having a fling with the much younger, up and coming actor; the producer who is not at all convinced about the validity of the film he is making; and the director’s wife, who is a successful author but now has writer’s block and endlessly obsesses about her next book on the last day of Virginia Wolff. These backstories are weaved together, and interlinked characters from the past interlinked, in skilled fashion. Pleasing reading but not Boyd at his absolute stellar best.

[mikefaroberts · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

An easy read but less satisfying than Boyd's other works.

[doondeck · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this book. Interesting group of characters and enough plot twists to keep it fun.

[hccpsk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found myself in a bit of a reading rut lately, and William Boyd’s Trio turned out to be just what I needed. The eponymous “Trio” are the three slightly interconnected characters who anchor the book with rotating short chapters—Talbot, Anny, and Elfrida. Set in 1968, the trio are all in the seaside city of Brighton for the filming of a movie—Talbot as the producer, Anny the star, and Elfrida the wife of the director. Boyd brings subtle English humor, his distinct attention to detail, and a convoluted story that unravels in an amusing but thought-provoking way. Trio gives us three lost souls in the same world but traveling completely divergent paths to their distinct ends.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 Brighton, 1968 and our trio of the title are all connected to the filming of a movie. Anny is a young, popular American actress, Talbot, our beleaguered producer and Elfrida, married to the director. There stories are told in alternating chapters and while there are many sidecharacters these are the main three. Elfridas story is the one I found the most interesting as she had been a best selling author, but was now suffering from writer's block and a myriad of other problems.

By its very nature, movie making is play acting, pretending, creating an alternate reality. Our three characters though are also pretending off set, their inner lives hidden, secrets kept, fractured souls. All have outward dramas, fears, insecurities that manifest in different ways. The story starts out slowly and draws us into the lives and feelings of these three. How they change, how they handle their challenges is the story. Some will succeed, others will struggle, not all happy endings.

McArthur Park, the song pops up here and there as a background to the time, the ridiculous lyrics of a cake being left out in the rain. Hated it then, dislike it now, but fitting as a time setter. This is my first book by this author and was also a read with Angela and Esil. We differed on our ratings for this one. Mine is the higher as I did get drawn into these peoples lives and the wonderful writing. This reads like a tragicomedy, a dark look at the people we hide inside our outward presence to the world. I thought the character development was outstanding. Slow start, many characters presented at the onset but soon picked up the grasp of things. This author clearly has control of his writing process and it shows.

ARC from Netgalley

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

William Boyd is one of our finest, and also more prolific, literary novelists, and I have been a huge fan of his books ever since I read his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, more than thirty years ago.

Many of his books have been adapted for television or cinema, usually with Boyd himself writing the screenplay. That has afforded him considerable insight into how films are made, which lies at the heart of this latest novel. Set in and around Brighton in 1968, Trio follows three principal figures in, or closely connected to, the crew making Emily Bracegirdle’s Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon, a low budget movie based upon a recent novel, all of whom have their own secrets.

Anny Viklund is the American star of the film, and has been conducting an affair with her young co-star, Troy Blaze (who, after a brief career as a pop star is trying to branch out into more serious work), although this is interrupted briefly when her French boyfriend turns up on the set. Brought in to the film to lend a touch of Hollywood glamour, the producer is worried because there had been gossip about her alleged dependency on sleeping pills and other medication. That is not her main secret, however. Anny had been married, and her ex-husband, whom she has not seen since their separation, is now on the run and being pursued by the FBI for hir ole in various acts of domestic terrorism. Such is the gravity of his crimes, that the FBI pursue him to Britain, where they expect he will attempt to contact his ex-wife.

The film’s director is Reggie (call me ‘Rodrigo’) Tipton. Essentially a journeyman rather than an embryonic Scorsese of Kubrick, Reggie does still have some artistic aspirations. His wife is novelist Elfrida Wing … well perhaps it might be more precise to call her a former novelist. Having experienced considerable early critical and commercial success, she has been suffering from a long spell of writer’s block, which has resulted in her turning to drink. Elfrida’s early novels had been compared favourably with the works of Virginia Woolf, an encomium which Elfrida detests. Indeed, her dislike for Virginia Woolf has led her to develop a minor obsession with the earlier novelist’s death, and she is now considering writing her own story based on Woolf’s last day. This project seldom progresses further than a halting attempt at an opening sentence, scrawled in her notebook while she tops up with gin. Although she and Reggie live in the same house, there is almost no connection between their discrete lives any longer.

Talbot Kydd, the film’s producer, has his own secret – he is leading a double life, His wife lives in Chiswick, but Talbot spends most of his time in Brighton, where he has taken a house where he spends most weekends. He is burdened by concerns, too. He knows that the film’s script does not really work, and is weighing up the pros and cons of bringing in a high profile writer to revise it, and give it a more convincing resolution. This would, of course, stretch an already tight budget beyond its current capacity, which has already been stretched by Reggie Tipton’s occasional flight of fancy.

This is the scenario we are provided with in the opening chapters of the book. Boyd sets his context convincingly, with chapters following the key characters in turn, although always in the third person. I was just five years old in 1968, so I can’t say how accurately Boyd captures the time. He does nail the parochialism of provincial life (and I guess that Brighton, now known for its exuberance and flamboyance – with a slight undercurrent of stifled impropriety - probably seemed pretty parochial back then). He avoids the obvious trick of clumsy references to current affiars. There is fleeting mention of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luter King, but these are dropped in almost fleetingly.

Boyd has been a master of interlaced narratives, often using the technique to stagger his story between two different times. Here, the whole story unfolds more or less in real time, but the shifting focus works well. There are three, perhaps four, central stories unfolding, but they only interest occasionally. This serves to strengthen, rather than diminish, the sense of reality.

I felt that this novel was not quite up on a par with Boyd’s finest works, but that is a bar that is hard to reach once, let alone to keep surpassing, and it was still a very enjoyable and rewarding read.