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Trio by William Boyd: book review





Trio (2020) is set in Brighton, England, in 1968, in high summer.

 

This book is written in three parts: 1) Duplicity, 2) Surrender, and 3) Escape. 

 

The ‘trio’ are three artists, all living secret lives: producer Talbot Kydd has a secret apartment; novelist Elfrida Wing (whose real name is Jennifer Tipton) has writer’s block and a secret stash of vodka; and American actress Anny Viklund has a secret that she is not aware of – why is the FBI interested in her? 

 

The FBI wants to question Anny – it might have something to do with her ex-husband Cornell Weekes, or her previous lovers Italian Gianluca Mavrocordato and Parisian Jacques Soldat (his peudonym), or even her current lover, her co-star Troy. Her life is complicated. Why, mid-movie, does she flee to Paris, and why is Talbot Kydd there too? What is Elfrida plotting? Elfrida is on a new mission that she hopes will break her writer’s block.

 

The trio are connected to each other through work – a British movie set in the coastal town of Brighton. Talbot is the film producer; Reggie Tipton, Elfrida’s husband, is the film director, and Anny is one of the major stars of the movie. The film has its ups and downs – hiring staff, disagreements, relationships, weather, delays – everyone’s insecurities are exposed. The pressures of the movie takes a toll on everyone, until someone cracks.

 

I recently read Boyd’s The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth (2017), a short story collection, and his other well-known novels, Any Human Heart (2002), Stars and Bars (1984), and A Good Man in Africa (1982).

 

Once again, Boyd’s style is engaging and written with elegance, intelligence, and finesse. This book is described as one of Boyd’s best. I thought Section One was dull, Section Two was mildly intriguing, and Section Three was rivetting. Section Three explodes, but not like a nuclear bomb. Instead, it’s like an underground explosive wire from Brighton to Paris that detonates and reverberates with multiple shocks and aftershocks that ripple down the plot route to its end, a percussive thrum – a perfect literary delight. 







 


 

 

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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