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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.
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Reviews
We are in the hands of a knowing writer with natty skills of listening and observation . . .[Boyt's] decision to trust her reader to grasp the torsion between the seen (often funny) and the felt (very often sad) establishes her characters as people about whom we do care
Witty, compelling and entertaining
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
A novel of great emotional precision
A complex exploration of grief and the ripples it causes. Insightful and funny
Insightful . . . a sharp, universal must-read
Susie Boyt has a unique perspective on modern life and close relationships, she is one of the funniest and most individual writers working today
This is a clever, wise, often sad book . . . Boyt is fiercely funny
Susie Boyt's quietly elegant prose tackles the most grievous of themes - suicide, eating disorders and mental illness - with the most tender of touches
Boyt's writing really sings. In these scenes, there is evidence of a writer sensitive to human frailty, with a keen eye for important emotional details and a real skill at writing beautifully restrained, economical prose
She has a sharp eye for the humour in impossibly dark situations . . . leavens the misery with welcome shafts of needling humour . . . Eve and Rebecca in particular are beautifully drawn characters, their nervous fury leaping from the page
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
She's a wonderful writer
Yet what makes Love & Fame so memorable are Boyt's uncomfortably recognisable, if often funny, observations on marriage and family life, with particular reference to the not-always-noble inner thoughts of women. Impressively, too, she's just as sharp on the love that holds families together as she is on the hurt that their members can inflict on each other. In one of the obituaries that Eve reads obsessively, her father is praised for his ability to convey 'the good and the bad of things, deeply felt at the same time' - a verdict that certainly applies to Boyt herself in this terrific book
She writes sentences with the nuance of a playful Henry James, exploring grief with wit and wisdom
The literary equivalent of a trapeze act . . . wise and witty . . . seriously comic . . . daring and stylishly written
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
Susie Boyt's new novel Love & Fameis characterised by the individuality of her voice. She writes sentences with the nuance of a playful Henry James, exploring grief with wit and wisdom
Blissfully immersive fiction . . . extremely funny, with a brilliant ear for zippy dialogue and an eagle eye for delusional egotistical fops
Love and Fame has its own distinctive, witty brilliance . . . Boyt's light touch with darkness and grief is masterly. Boyt's delicate style, complex plotting and seductive observations . . . add up to an entrancing whole
[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
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
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
A funny and tender love story
Boyt's trick is to turn all of this into something surprisingly breezy, as witty as it is raw
Startling and witty - a delight
To me, Susie Boyt represents the shady part of the Venn diagram between an Alice Munro story and a Nancy Meyers movie. Her books are wonderfully escapist - they're witty, romantic and almost everyone has a lovely house - but they also have a deeply affecting sadness to them. Love & Fame is a great glass-of-wine-by-the-fire read - save it for your next lazy Sunday
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
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
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
A warm, witty and insightful novel about grief, anxiety and love