A novelist, a producer, and an actress confront their demons on and off a film set. British author Boyd's 16th novel takes place in Brighton in 1968 and revolves around the making of a film called Emily Bracegirdle's Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon. The titular trio consists of Elfrida Wing, an alcoholic novelist who hasn't written a book in a decade and whose marriage to the film's director is hanging by a thread; Talbot Kydd, the film's producer, a closeted gay man also in an unhappy marriage; and Anny Viklund, the young American actress playing Emily, who is sleeping with her hunky co-star and continually dosing herself in classic 1960s movie-star style from an abundant pharmacopeia of pills. In addition to these three, a slew of other interesting characters fills out the corners of the novel, giving it the feel of one of Robert Altman's high-spirited ensemble films of this era. 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. Having been annoyed for most of her career at being compared to Virginia Woolf, she takes it in her head to write a novel based on Woolf's last day on Earth. Over and over she writes the first paragraph--Woolf wakes up, sees a shape the sun is making on the wall (a rhomboid? a parallelogram? a diamond?), has no idea it's the last morning of her life--at which point the author pours herself a glass of vodka to celebrate, and there goes that day. Another running joke involves Talbot's being tormented by the idiotic lyrics of the song "MacArthur Park," which seems to be playing on every radio in the country. His deeper torment regarding his sexuality is highlighted by the changing mores of the period, and he's also got real problems with his movie, which has to be constantly rewritten to work around problems created by its cast. Even if someone left the cake out in the rain, it's delicious. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The lives of a film producer, an actor, and a novelist converge during an ill-fated movie shoot in Boyd's madcap 16th novel (after Love Is Blind). It is 1968 and the very British Talbot Kydd is in Brighton overseeing the production. His leading lady is American ingenue Anny Viklund, and the movie is directed by the pretentious, unfaithful husband of famous writer Elfrida Wing. Talbot, secretly gay, constantly puts out fires on and off the movie set. Anny has been extorted by her terrorist ex-husband who has recently escaped from prison. And Elfrida is a raging alcoholic who can't get past the first, terrible, paragraph of her new book. 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. Boyd is an exquisite stylist, and his tragicomic novel is a sublime escape. (Jan.)

Boyd is well known for all-enveloping, cradle-to-grave novels (Sweet Caress, 2015) that trace the full arc of a character's life, but here he narrows the time frame to a few transformative months in the lives of three people, all of whom are associated with a film being made in Brighton, England, in 1968. In the opening three chapters, we meet Boyd's titular trio--novelist Elfrida Wing, wife of the film's director; Talbot Kydd, the film's producer; and Anny Viklund, the female lead. All three, we learn, are approaching or in the midst of personal crises. Elfrida is a blocked writer and quiet drunk, hoping to resurrect her career with a novel about the last day in Virginia Woolf's life; Talbot is a repressed gay man, unhappy in his marriage and sublimating his desires through taking photographs of attractive men; and Anny is nursing a pill addiction while attempting to shoulder the burden of too many men in her life, including her young costar and her divorced American husband, a fugitive terrorist. 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.

Set in the summer of 1968, Boyd's novel concerns three characters: Anny Viklund, an up-and-coming American actress with a pill habit and a checkered past who is in England filming a movie; Elfrida Wing, a once-successful novelist, dubbed "the new Virginia Woolf" by the press, who assuages a decade long writer's block with a secret alcohol habit and is floundering through a failing marriage with Reggie, the film's director; and Talbot Kidd, the film's producer and repressed homosexual hesitantly coming to terms with his true nature. The narrative proceeds in a wryly comic vein with Anny falling for costar Troy, Elfrida potentially overcoming her writer's block with a novel about Virginia Woolf's last day, and Talbot meeting an attractive young scaffolder repairing his house--until Anny's former husband, Cornell Weekes, a wanted terrorist, reenters her life and the story takes a darker turn. Anny implicates herself by giving him money, and the situation soon devolves into chaos, on the set and otherwise. VERDICT With finely delineated characters and a deft comic touch, Costa Prize winner Boyd (Restless) precisely skewers the absurdity of the movie business while sending his trio of characters toward a not uniformly pleasant reckoning with truer versions of themselves.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA