Overview
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?
William Boyd is a writer who was born in Ghana on March 7, 1952. He was educated at Gordonstoun school; and then the University of Nice, France, the University of Glasgow, and finally Jesus College, Oxford. Between 1980 and 1983 he was a lecturer in English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and it was while he was there that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005. Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Novelists" in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. His novels include: A Good Man in Africa, for which he won the Whitbread Book award and Somerset Maugham Award in 1981; An Ice-Cream War, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1982; Brazzaville Beach, published in 1991, and Any Human Heart, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2002. Restless, the tale of a young woman who discovers that her mother had been recruited as a spy during World War II, was published in 2006 and won the Novel Award in the 2006 Costa Book Awards. Boyd published Waiting for Sunrise: A Novel in early 2012. In 2015 his title, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Clay, Amory made the new Zealand Best Seller List.
Professional Reviews
" Trio , with its wickedly accurate period detail and darkly wayward farce, is Boyd at his most entertaining."
-- The Boston Globe
"It would be hard to think of a living novelist whose books encompass more history, more settings, more professions, more varieties of individual fate, than William Boyd."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"A meticulously crafted tale. . . . Richly imagined, thick with physical and emotional detail, and deeply satisfying. . . . When we finally fade to black, the audience regrets only that the show wasn''t longer."
-- The Wall Street Journal
"The most accomplished novel I have read in a long while. . . . Superbly wry and wise and funny and truthful."
-- Edward Docx, The Guardian
"An elating read."
-- The Sunday Times (London)
"Boyd''s prose is as fluent as ever, but it''s the ideas pulsing beneath the surface of the story that distinguish Trio . . . . Affecting as a subtle exploration of the relationship between individuals and history and as a depiction of characters who are searching for the things that make life worth living, whether they find them in film, literature or elsewhere."
-- Financial Times
"Great fun for readers keen to flee today''s soul-crushing social and political turmoil for the seemingly more innocent--and in this case madcap--cultural ferment of the late 1960s."
-- The Washington Post
"Boyd is an exquisite stylist, and his tragicomic novel is a sublime escape."
-- Publishers Weekly
"One of our best contemporary storytellers. . . . Trio embraces comedy, tragedy and redemption."
-- The Spectator
"Boyd winks at the idiosyncrasies and vulgarities specific to each character''s métier, and at the precarious process of artistic creation--its joy, torment, stasis, and upheaval."
-- The New Yorker
"A lavishly plotted page-turner that oozes ''60s cool."
-- Metro
"For all the twists, the real delight is in William Boyd''s wry portrait of a bygone age, an evolving era in terms of drugs and sexual rights. . . . Boyd''s usual sure touch is evident throughout this tender, gently comic work."
-- The Independent
"[A] well-tuned novel with plenty of perfectly-paced drama, wit, and intriguing plot twists that accompany its more serious themes about privacy, secrecy, and Camus''s one fundamental philosophical question from which all questions follow."
-- The Brooklyn Rail
"Immensely readable, its descriptions full of light and colour, its humour spot on, its mood a perfect mix of frolicsome and melancholy."
-- The Sunday Telegraph
"Boyd . . . beautifully captures the chaos and exhilaration of a shambolic film set, in which unforeseen disasters and skullduggery create their own opportunities and problems."
-- The Observer
"Boyd has written comic novels, thrillers, thoughtful character studies and fiction that ponders the twentieth century''s great turning points. Now, with Trio , he combines all the above into a feast of storytelling crammed with delicious plots and subplots. . . . Like the old pro he is, Boyd handles it with total aplomb."
-- Reader''s Digest
"Boyd''s sublime gift for characterisation is given full flow in this pacy, utter treat of a novel."
-- The Telegraph
"By turns raucous, charming and eccentric."
-- GQ (UK)
"Boyd evokes the porn, prescription drugs and private investigators of the age with grace, an ingenious structure and characters who surprise us almost as much as they surprise themselves."
-- The Mail on Sunday
"Boyd is a modern master, whether working on canvases large or small."
-- Booklist (starred review)
