Elegant, mature and richly atmospheric, a bittersweet love story glimpsed through the veil of memory Edward Docx, in The Guardian, said: "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" but Docx feels that Boyd "could have taken more risks in this book. I wanted him to deploy his formal talents to scream something, howl something, to weigh in. What was missing was madness, rage, despair, something existentially incandescent – whatever Boyd’s version of that might be." [1] he echado de menos más política, menos malentendidos, un poquito más de acción (y mira que soy la fan número uno de los Libros Donde No Pasa Nada) The framing story that gathers the three subjects of Boyd’s study of depression is the production of a movie in Brighton, in the year 1968. A midlife crisis can be triggered at any age, apparently:

We watch as this unsettled trio of characters are slowly unwrapped. Each is engrossed in fighting their own particular demons as the filming draws to its end. From time to time their paths cross. Slowly it begins to dawn on each of them that their own situation is becoming more complex and less resolved. It’s all very cleverly done with thoughtful, brilliantly crafted characters and spot on dialogue. Sometimes it’s sad and often it’s hilarious, a cross between a slowly unravelling tragedy and a old ‘Carry On’ film. I absolutely loved it! A finely judged performance: a deft and resonant alchemy of fact and fiction , of literary myth and imagination' Guardian on Love is Blind At the age of nine years he attended Gordonstoun school, in Moray, Scotland and then Nice University (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow University (MA Hons in English and Philosophy), where he edited the Glasgow University Guardian. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford in 1975 and completed a PhD thesis on Shelley. For a brief period he worked at the New Statesman magazine as a TV critic, then he returned to Oxford as an English lecturer teaching the contemporary novel at St Hilda's College (1980-83). It was while he was here that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published. Finding yourself; revealing yourself; vulnerability; and realizing your part in life’s movie—or individual reality—prevails on the trio. The reader gains an intimate view of each, often more than they do of themselves—their denials, falsehoods, flaws. All the parts are placed consistently and consciously-—maybe too consciously, and I felt unsatisfied at the end. So this is it—the breadth of the story and its allegory? I gripped my hands at intervals, disappointed that Boyd didn’t do more with the material. But I don’t want to speak for most readers. You may feel rewarded; Boyd keenly creates complex characters that eclipse some of the story’s failures. I kept waiting for a radiant event but instead it was more like a tatty, faded finale.I’ve always found William Boyd to be a wonderfully inventive writer, he seldom fails to grab me and haul me deeply into his stories. This book is set in Brighton, Sussex in 1968 and though it features a full cast of characters the spotlight falls mainly on three people: a film producer, an actress and a novelist. And from the moment Boyd drops in the adjective delightful I knew this was going to be a very English tale.

Elfrida Wing is a novelist without a novel in 10 yrs, a closet drinker and wife of the philandering director of a movie being filmed in England in 1968. Talbot Kidd is the movie’s producer, a closeted gay man. Anny Viklund, the starring actress, is sleeping with a younger man, her costar, but in another relationship with an older man . Oh and her ex husband is a terrorist on the lam. The trio of the title are three characters all linked to a greater or lesser through the British film industry in the 1960s. The narrative style is jaunty and captures a sense of what it might have been like on the set of a Carry On film - everyone putting on a hilarious performance in front of the camera, while mired in various troubles and issues in real life. So far, so good. The difficulty I had with the text, however, was that everyone is so relentlessly unlikeable and unpleasant. I have no problem reading about such characters in general - who wants a story where everyone is PollyAnna? But there just seemed too much of it here. Perhaps it is a reflection of trying to read in these troubles 2020 times, I’m not sure. Talbot is middle-aged, balding and struggling to adapt to the realisation that his sexual preference is for the male of the species. He’s overseeing the making of a film with an improbable title and an unlikely plot. Anny is a star of the moment American actress cast as the female lead, she has a history of having relationships with older, troublesome men. Elfrida is the third main player and hasn’t written a book for ten years - she's currently finding solace in a bottle as her womanising husband is off directing the film.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. Is redemption possible for this trio of damaged people? Mr. Boyd tries to show empathy and kindness towards the problems they have to deal with, but it is hard to help people who do not want to help themselves and who live in denial. I think he wrote the novel in an attempt to find an answer out of this dilemma. The above quote, spoken by one of the characters in Trio, speaks to William Boyd's intention with this novel. He succeeds in letting the reader inside the heads and behind the masks of his three main characters. He slowly removes their masks so the readers gets to know them as they get to know themselves, though this could have been done more successfully if not for some of the problems with the novel. pd: mi personaje favorito de este trío era august y me ha dado mucha rabia que no tuviese capítulos él solo! me intrigaba un montón, quería saber más sobre su familia, su padre, su hermano, sus ilusiones, sus sueños, su día a día :(

this is not as major of a criticism as it sounds, because thora is an interesting enough character with sufficiently developed insights and moments of eloquently rendered wise internal monologue that she could carry this book on her own. so my real criticism is that we weren't given that.Qué ha pasado entonces? Pues que no tengo otra manera de explicar mi anterior contradicción más que con ayuda de otra nueva. Detesto a ese tipo de gente que llega y te dice: "oh, este libro me llegó justo en el momento vital adecuado", PERO, me vais a permitir que en esta ocasión os diga que, en efecto, mientras lo leía, tenía la sensación de que la historia me hablaba directamente a mí. De haber intentado leer "Trío" un par de meses antes, estoy seguro que lo habría odiado o, muy probablemente, abandonado y, sin embargo, ahí estaba yo, devorando sus páginas y completamente inmerso en la historia, los trayectos de 40 minutos en el cercanías se me pasaban volando. I’ve been thinking lately that connecting with a book is not all that different from connecting with a new friend. Sometimes, a person comes into your life who is exuberant, transparent, and instantly likeable. Other times, it takes a little bit of work but once their effort is expended, the rewards are worth it.

The year is 1968. WW II is a shadow, Vietnam is a cloud, and everyone wants to feel brighter. Anny Viklund, an American actress, is in Brighton, England as the star of this Ladder movie. She hears that her convicted terrorist ex-husband has escaped prison and may be trying to find her. Her current boyfriend is an older man, Jacques, a Parisian philosopher involved with the cultural revolution in the French city manifested by mass protests and street battles. In the interim, Anny has gotten romantically involved with the less complicated and more gentle Troy, her romantic interest in Ladder.This is the same issue I imagine William Boyd had to deal with when he told his publishers that he wanted to write a novel about three damaged people who go through a midlife crisis, an introspective character study in three parts. How can he sell this?