For all its brio, Trio hits some serious notes. It has a whiff of the ambivalent Graham Greene about it, waffling between the worldly gravity of The Quiet American and the sober farce of Our Man in Havana — as in fact the whole of Boyd’s celebrated oeuvre does, with its admixture of social, comic and recent-historical drama ranging light-footed all over the world ... They all think and act like characters in a screenplay (Anny: 'It was crazy — stop! She admonished herself. Get a grip. . . . She hated herself for thinking this but she wanted to see him again — just once more.') But they are in a screenplay, in a sense, and the movie Boyd has made of them may not be Bergman or even Capra, but it is, as I began by saying, diverting.
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 ... For readers who go to fiction for the pleasures of panoramic sweep, elaborate plotting and the company of a humane, genial intelligence, he has become one of the preferred masters. His new book, Trio, delivers much of the same set of literary goods, with perhaps a lighter touch than usual ... More than just a clever authorial performance, the structure underpins a sustained preoccupation with the tension between fate and chance, art and accident, script and improvisation ... Its settings (especially the pubs) are sharply observed. Its humor and melancholy are comfortingly English, premised (like the old British sitcoms it also resembles) on the supposition of a helpless collective commitment to folly. It’s a satisfying production, entertainingly retro, like a ride in Talbot’s beloved vintage Alvis coupe ... It seems churlish to wish — though I did — that the mission had been a touch more dangerous.
At times Boyd’s prose veers towards the clinical, his scene setting like a surveillance camera picking out fine details but missing atmosphere. But the plot moves along with gusto, and with Elfride, Talbot and Anny, Boyd has created an unforgettable trio of characters.
... an intriguing story ... Boyd reveals fascinating central and minor characters with hidden and often double lives ... You might think that these eccentric movie types would be a tad stereotypical, but Boyd manages to make believable, and sometimes humorous and pitiable people out of his major characters and even the supporting cast. Even minor characters like the gay private investigator, the FBI agent, and the Special Branch inspector seem interesting and true to life ... a fine, 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. Since Boyd’s story is populated mostly with film folks, and knowing that Boyd has had his hand in screenplays and plays, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t write the screenplay for this story, even if film doesn’t quite reveal what’s going on in those masked and private human heads as perfectly as the novel.
Boyd skilfully and with great subtlety moves from a largely comic treatment of the chaos on the film set to a sensitive portrayal of fracturing inner lives, though even the latter is rendered with a superbly Forsterian sense of tragicomedy. Boyd is a modern master, whether working on canvases large or small.
William Boyd is one of our best contemporary storytellers ... Boyd’s imagery is entertainingly vivid ... Trio embraces comedy, tragedy and redemption. It succeeds impressively because of its dramatic, often sensational, revelations.
Talbot readily admits that in the movie world 'ordinary norms of behaviour did not apply.' Still, the surprises he faces on his latest project are beyond anything he has encountered before. To say more about them would give too much away. But it’s a ton of fun to see Talbot navigate the mayhem. Boyd can also be trusted to get his atmospherics right ... Where some writers come at the 1960s too reverently...Boyd brings a lighter skepticism to the era and reminds us that not everyone was tuned into the turbulence of the times ... Trio, with its wickedly accurate period detail and darkly wayward farce, is Boyd at his most entertaining.
Mr. Boyd’s narrative gifts and film experience blend harmoniously ... Mr. Boyd tells his witty yet increasingly tragic story in chapters that alternate among the trio’s viewpoints, and the cinematic style of his narrative gifts is, appropriately enough, on full display. These include crisp pacing, cliffhanger chapter endings, colorful characters defined by action, and a narrative dominated by lively scenes rather than introspection. The result is a meticulously crafted tale driven in every sense by moviemaking—one of several characteristic obsessions of the author’s in evidence here, including especially the shifting nature of identity ... The book’s main failing is that annus horribilis. Although 'MacArthur Park' seems to be playing on every radio, only the faintest flavor of the times is conveyed. The novel’s events may occur in 1968, but the era’s 'happenings' are somehow missing, along with any strong sense of the look, feel or character of that distinctive time. That’s a shame, but a small one. Mr. Boyd’s fast-paced blend of comedy and tragedy, written with his usual brio, is richly imagined, thick with physical and emotional detail, and deeply satisfying. By the end, the lives of his trio are changed forever, mostly unexpectedly. Some of those changes are sobering indeed. But the author’s skills are such that, when we finally fade to black, the audience regrets only that the show wasn’t longer.
Boyd is clearly following here some of the details of the ultimately tragic life of American actress Jean Seberg ... Duplicity is the key to Trio, as the story of the main characters plays out in their parallel universes against the turbulent background of the filming ... Trio, while not in the top tier of Boyd's oeuvre, is never boring, an entertaining black comedy, with echoes of Evelyn Waugh.
At first sight, Trio seems conspicuously underwhelming ... Boyd is very much in domestic mode here ... the whole thing purrs along with such effortlessness that you are barely aware of the engine working underneath ... There is much attention to period detail, a lovely portrait of the 60s British film world, and Boyd’s characters live, breathe and bruise vividly. All of this makes for a novel as charming as it is satisfying, a pleasure to read.
Boyd is a hugely entertaining writer, his literary novels are always seductively accessible and Trio has a page turning quality that is a delight to read ... this is Boyd’s wittiest tale for some time, he pin points life’s absurdity with a clear perception, even in the descriptions of blackly tragic moments in the characters experience readers will recognise humour ... Boyd is usually a master at recreating randomness in life but, in truth, the situations that arise in Trio seem a little more contrived than usual, it’s not a major flaw. There are enough red herrings to throw the reader off the scent of which characters will react in which way and a surprise or two to finish the novel. These people feel authentic to their time and place, their stories are interesting and over time more and more of the zeitgeist of the age and the clash with traditional fifties values emerges.
... brilliantly drawn, often grotesque characters make Trio Boyd’s funniest book since 1998’s Armadillo ... Boyd, a screenwriter and occasional director himself, beautifully captures the chaos and exhilaration of a shambolic film set, in which unforeseen disasters andskulduggery create their own opportunities and problems ... where Trio succeeds beautifully is in its creation of a phantasmagorical, dope- and alcohol-saturated world, in which Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park is always playing in the background.
This is a book about the absurd business of film-making, the desperate business of writing a novel and the ludicrous business of acting – and it’s superbly wry and wise and funny and truthful on all three subjects ... But, beneath that, it’s really a novel about the correspondences between the inner and the outer lives of human beings: a novel, in other words, about identity ... Boyd is a highly accomplished writer and Trio is a masterclass in artistic technique. He introduces his characters impressively quickly and with deft ingenuity: a brief paragraph and they’re real, rich and visible to the reader ... The balance of plot movement and interiority is also perfectly calibrated – action and ideas, drama and sensibility, stuff happening and people thinking. The reader is neither bored nor taken for an idiot ... And yet, what was missing was madness, rage, despair, something existentially incandescent – whatever Boyd’s version of that might be. If you’re lucky enough to have a late period, you might as well burn.
While this might seem to be quite a bit for a novelist to undertake, Boyd is just getting started as he weaves into the story a large group of subplots populated with related characters... Readers move from episode to episode as Boyd tells his story in a traditional British manner. None of his characters, not even the Americans, get too excited. They go about their business in the manner that the English do, quietly and calmly ... a thoroughly enjoyable, amusing and entertaining journey through England (with a side trip to Paris); a cast of eccentric characters; and an inordinate number of cups of tea and large gin and tonics. It is great fun to read and follow the various agents, artists and investigators on their adventures. Trio is a superb escape novel for the dark days of winter.
Boyd writes from a position of knowledge. His depictions of artists working in other forms have always been convincing ... The same is true of the characters in his new novel ... Boyd’s prose is as fluent as ever, but it’s the ideas pulsing beneath the surface of the story that distinguish Trio ... Trio is 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.
Boyd skilfully and with great subtlety moves from a largely comic treatment of the chaos on the film set to a sensitive portrayal of fracturing inner lives, though even the latter is rendered with a superbly Forsterian sense of tragicomedy. Boyd is a modern master, whether working on canvases large or small.
Boyd treats the triangular structure of character narratives with a welcome degree of flexibility ... he lets the story move organically along, avoiding any of the fragmentation that multiperspectivity can bring. The layering of detail, too, creates a distinctly three-dimensional world where real-life popular culture rubs shoulders with fictional creations ... his characters can never quite be confined to the page ...Though much of the novel treats this private/public theme with a quirky charm, there is an occasional tendency to overplay the detail. Trio is keenly aware of the paradoxical relationship to secrecy a novel brings. The author’s masterstroke here is to complicate this aspect further.
What a pleasure it is to read a novel by an author who not only knows what he is doing and how to bring it off, but also remembers that people mostly read novels for enjoyment ... Boyd moves from one register to another without striking a false note. His sympathy for his characters is rooted in the recognition that most of us know ourselves imperfectly and seek to keep even this imperfect knowledge from others ... Trio is a delight, one of Boyd’s best novels ... Never content to repeat himself, he treats each novel as a new challenge. In Trio he meets that challenge triumphantly.
Trio sends an affably satiric shimmer over the making of [a] film, with the never-nonplussed Talbot adroitly manoeuvring his way through a maze of complications: ceaseless rewrites, grotesque miscastings, preposterous demands from investors, an absconding key performer ... Some of the figures involved seem like comic stereotypes from central casting ... But the plot keeps things moving along entertainingly. Although one of its storylines takes a darker turn than might have been expected, its prevailing tone is jaunty and its conclusion optimistic. Full of neat phrases ('Brighton’s gull-clawed air') and quirkily funny scenes (between takes naked actors in a porn film grouse about the rise in local vandalism), it’s an elating read.
[Boyd's] rightly credited with combining rollicking story lines with subtly probing examinations of art, fate and the vagaries of love and when he is good he is very very good. Alas, when he is bad, he's downright dispiriting. Trio falls into the latter category ... what a scrappy, unsatisfactory, un-atmospheric novel this is ... Much of the book, as the filming rumbles on, is padding – endless needless descriptions and she said this and then he did thats; long winded encounters with people who have scant bearing on the story; narrative detours that go nowhere.
As Boyd expertly unfolds his characters’ stories, philosophical questions emerge: where does each of these individuals belong in history, and must they play the part expected of them? Filled with outlandish and amusing characters, including predatory talent agents and a pornography-peddling has-been actor, Boyd’s novel offers its heroes paths to escape their burdens, some of which are a bit implausible, but all are fun to watch ... a sublime escape.
Boyd deftly juggles serious and comedic elements, generally favoring the comic, as with Elfrida's many pathetic attempts to convince herself she's getting back on her game ... Even if someone left the cake out in the rain, it’s delicious.
