User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Jonathon Coe is probably best known for his state of the nation, very human comedies that examine the British, their relationships, politics and foibles.
In Mr Wilder and Me, his 13th novel, he changes direction.
This is a gentle book that, in an interesting way, explores the final years of Billy Wilder, the famous Hollywood film director.
We first meet Calista (our main protagonist) in present day London. She’s of Greek descent, married with two grown up daughters and scores music for film.
A chain of memory takes us back many years to the point when she leaves Athens and her parents for the first time to travel the world.
When roaming America she’s asked by a new travelling companion if she would lend her moral support at a dinner date with a barely known friend of her father’s.
The friend is Billy Wilder.
So, Calista meets Mr Wilder along with his great friend and writing partner Iz Diamond and Audrey and Barbara their wives. A tenuous relationship begins, eventually seeing Calista working on the set of Fedora, Wilder’s penultimate and not particularly successful film.
Calista is a very matter of fact, down to earth character ‘A sensible person rather than a romantic’ - which could be seen as a weakness in the book in that Calista’s coming of age story, love life, hopes and aspirations are played down .......... by herself, as narrator. There is no big emotional centre to the book, or not where you would expect to find it. However, the fading away of Wilder’s successful career, the enduring nature of friendship, the happy/ sad flow of memory are all affecting and poignant in their own subtle way.
Mr Wilder and Me does take a darker turn as Billy Wilder thinks back to the war and describes how his family were scarred by the Holocaust. The irony that German money is now funding his latest venture is not lost to the reader.
I found the book to be touching and full of interest. There’s loads of fascinating stuff about movies and movie making, there’s some illuminating vignettes of real Hollywood characters and there are, of course, some evocative settings - Corfu, Paris, Munich, London and Hollywood.
All in all, an informative and very likeable novel.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Oh, dear. This one just didn't work for me, which was a massive surprise given that I'm a huge fan of both Billy Wilder's films and Jonathan Coe's novels. My main issue with the book is that it just didn't seem to go anywhere. Obviously, Coe chose this story for a reason, but even after finishing the book I have no idea what it was. Also, it was incredibly pretentious - 15 of the book's 270-ish pages were given over to the subject of brie (very cheesy), and there was a frequent use of French words and phrases that I was unable to translate. All in all, a frustrating book, with no apparent purpose.
Rating: really liked it
This is the story of how a young Calista who is Greek/English meets film director Billy Wilder and writer Iz Diamond by chance. She amuses Wilder with her naive boredom as at this point she has no idea who he is. As ‘Fedora’ is to be part filmed in Greece she gets a job as an interpreter. Calista is looking back on this youthful experiences, reflecting on the experiences she gained.
This is a captivating and enthralling read which I rapidly became totally absorbed in. I knew little about Wilder beyond his legendary status as this has definitely piqued my interest to know more and I’m sure that people who are film buffs will enjoy this portrayal. Fedora is being made as Wilder’s sun is descending and he hopes it will restore some of his reputation lost to the ‘bearded ones’ - the new breed of directors like Spielberg and Scorsese. I love the insights, I find what Iz Diamond, their respective wives say about Wilder enlightening and fascinating and the director comes across as meticulous, compassionate, kind and perceptive. It’s nostalgic too as Calista looks back on this early adventure as she also reflects on her daughters who are now the same age as she was then. It’s dark too and bitter for Wilder as parts of the book are set in Germany which he finds difficult. The settings are superb and the film scenes shot in various places are colourful and as intriguing as some of the actors. This is a coming of age story for Calista, she learns so much about herself, about people and the world so for her it’s an awakening whereas it’s the reverse for Wilder. He is ageing and has the acquired wisdom and a multitude of experiences, some good and some bad.
Overall, a very entertaining, well written and delightful story which is also very thought provoking. I loved it.
Rating: really liked it
Jonathan Coe enters rather different territory from his usual fare with this historical blend of fact and fiction, set in the late 1970s, as he unpeels the layers of the life and times of the famous Hollywood director, Billy Wilder. An almost 60 year old troubled Calista, with twin daughters, is feeling increasingly unwanted, including professionally as a musical composer, she looks back with nostalgia on a pivotal time in her life, when as a young and naive woman she left Athens and found herself on a Greek island and on the film set of Fedora, one of Wilder's last films in what was a prolific and lauded career. She is employed as an interpreter and translator, embarking on an exciting and glamorous adventure, immersed in a world that she knew not, where everything is strange and new.
This coming of age phase of Calista's life contrasts sharply with the older Wilder coming to terms to the harsh realities of a Hollywood that no longer has any interest in him, the times they are a changing, and its now the time of adrenaline fuelled action packed movies and a greater focus on more serious and darker themes. This is epitomised for Wilder in the financing of his film coming from Germans, Calista travels with him to Munich to film scenes there. Wilder's roots are European and his traumatic and tragic personal history is laid bare, of trying to find out what happened to his Austrian Jewish relatives, a man carrying the all too real burdens and impact of the horrors and terrors of the Nazis. It is so understandable that an anguished Wilder would concentrate on the lighter and more entertaining themes of life in his filmmaking, leaving those who are not weighed down by personal traumas more able to make movies of humanity's significantly darker sides.
Coe pays a tender and affectionate homage to Wilder with this fascinating, intimate, well researched, knowledgeable and immersive picture of Wilder's inner and outer self, the personal and the professional, what it means to be affected by the ups and downs of being in the creative industries, that is later echoed by Calista's experiences as a music composer. Insights are given of him on the film set with its ups and downs, and his often witty relationship with the screenwriter, Iz Diamond. This is a lovely, emotionally heart tugging, informative, often humorous, engaging and entertaining read, of the film industry and major players within it in this historical period, of the ageing process, and the impact of the personal on the professional, and of how we can all face similar issues, irrespective of our status and wealth. Many thanks to Penguin UK for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Same as
Fedora, the 1978
Billy Wilder film this book is revolving around, this story
…shows such compassion for its characters: for its ageing characters, in particular – be they men or women – struggling to find a role for themselves in a world which is interested only in youth and novelty. 
My guess is that
Jonathan Coe deliberately set out to write a novel resembling, in pace and ambience, the charming story-telling of old Hollywood movies. (
Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner is mentioned more than once, along with most of Wilder’s popular and less-so films). The plot feels like a fairy tale and alternates between the life-changing encounter of a young Greek girl, Calista, with the well-known director back in the 70s, and how that meeting keeps affecting her approach to the challenges of middle age that her life is entering at the time she narrates the story.
The real protagonist of the novel is, of course, Billy Wilder himself; it’s his own story that evocatively demonstrates the many ways History and Chance affect people’s destinies, sometimes leading them to salvation and achievement, other times mercilessly crashing them down. It’s all part of the script called life and how it keeps deviating from what even the best of writers, like Wilder and his long-time friend and associate
I.A.L. Diamond (also present in the book), had actually plotted.
From the Greek islands of Lefkada and Corfu, where Fedora was partly shot to the Ufa Studios of pre-war Berlin, from The Bistro Restaurant in Beverly Hills to Bayerischer Hotel in Munich, from the old Ansonia Hotel in Paris where the German and Austrian émigrés lived before the war to the plush Raphael Hotel where the filming crew stayed at the time Wilder was shooting Fedora, from the BAFTA bar in Piccadilly to a brie-producing farm in Meaux, near Paris, this story takes us places; and in the travel-dry season we are all experiencing right now it’s a nice ticket for some flights of fancy.
It’s obvious that Coe did a lot of research prior to writing it. That said, I had the sense that the ample material he amassed gave birth to the story of Calista and not the other way around. Her story seemed too prosaic to merit a whole novel; I think that she only served as the vehicle that enabled the narration of a bunch of other, far more interesting stories. I didn’t warm up to her younger self’s portrayal. Maybe Coe wanted to create a Cinderella-like (or more befittingly, since we’re talking about Wilder, a
Sabrina-like) tenderfoot to play the part of the wide-eyed recipient of Wilder’s hard-earned wisdom. But this kind of innocence and unworldliness needs the magnetism and charm of, say, an
Audrey Hepburn in order to be alluring. With the visual factor missing, it was frankly a bit boring - whereas I very much wanted to be enchanted. But perhaps it was another case of great expectations:
Coe has never let me down so far, although he has grown into a very different author from the impudent young man who gave us What a Carve Up! , his best work in my opinion.
The theme was so very alluring for a movie-buff and a Wilder-enthusiast like myself. It contains so many anecdotes and astute observations on movie-making and film makers, such as this:
…the Lubitsch approach to storytelling was the ultimate in elegance, slyness and obliqueness, underpinned by a sort of gentle, quintessentially Middle-European cynicism. And Wilder’s own take on moviemaking:
…I want my movie to be serious, I want it to be sad – but that doesn’t mean, when the audience comes out of the cinema, they feel like you’ve been holding their head down the toilet for the last two hours, you know? You have to give them something else, something a little bit elegant, a little bit beautiful. Life is ugly. We all know that. You don’t need to go to the movies to learn that life is ugly. You go because those two hours will give your life some little spark, whether it’s comedy or laughter or… just, I don’t know, some beautiful gowns and good-looking actors or something – some spark that it didn’t have before. A bit of joy, maybe. The main character and part of the locations are related to my country. The plot, however beautiful an ending it delivered, had me thinking that the material it was based upon would better serve as one of those long, thoroughly researched New Yorker articles. It was unnecessarily verbose at times and it had many clichés that, however true, undermined its originality. A pleasant story, nevertheless, just not as exciting as I had expected it to be. Funny, same thing seems to be true for Fedora, the film that Wilder wrote and directed. But then nobody’s perfect! :-)
Rating: really liked it
Mr Wilder and Me (2020) is the ever reliable Jonathan Coe's latest novel. It's utterly charming. I was engrossed from the off. The multiple, interconnected narratives are all absorbing however the main one, about the making of Billy Wilder's 1978 film
Fedora is completely beguiling. If you are interested in cinema, and most especially the work of Billy Wilder, this book becomes even more enjoyable. By the end, somewhat predictably, I had a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.
5/5
Rating: really liked it
Life is ugly. We all know that. You don't need to go to the movies to learn that life is ugly. You go because those two hours will give your life some little spark, whether it's comedy or laughter or... just, I don't know, some beautiful gowns and good-looking actors or something... some spark that it didn't have before. A bit of joy, maybe.
This is an amiable novel that felt a bit inconsequential through much of its length as almost-sixty year old Cal recalls her youth when she fell into a job working for Billy Wilder. Film buffs will probably lap up all the insider gossip and details as Wilder is making
Fedora.
It's only quite near the end that some kind of deeper meaning came into focus for me as two types of film-making, or creativity more generally, are brought into tension with each other: the turning away from pain approach of Wilder who used frivolity, comedy and humour to hold tragedy at bay, and the contrasting embracing of anguish, epitomised in the book specifically by Spielberg's
Schindler's List, though directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola are name-checked too.
The 'now' story of Calista feels rather superimposed on the more interesting tale of her youth, and this is notably less funny than other books of Coe's that I've read: there's a whimsical moment when Wilder makes fun of Hollywood's obsession with sharks following the box-office success of
Jaws but generally this is more warm and generous in spirit than hilarious.
Thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley
Rating: really liked it
Fifty-something film music composer Calista looks back on her youth when, in the summer of 1977, she worked on the Billy Wilder movie Fedora and got to know the personable director.
I know - from the summary above you can tell it’s not a plot-heavy novel! But Jonathan Coe’s latest, while not as great as his last couple books have been, was a fairly interesting mix of fiction and non-fiction.
The way Coe wrote Wilder was easily the most enjoyable part of the book. He very masterfully brings to life someone I only know the name of - I’ve not seen any of his movies and, before I properly looked into this book, thought the novel was going to be about the actor Gene “Willy Wonka/Young Frankenstein” Wilder! - showing us his big personality, his wit and charm, warmth and intelligence. If a book isn’t going to be story-driven then its characters need to make up for that and Coe’s Wilder did just that.
It’s not just about the making of Wilder’s 1978 movie Fedora but also about his long and interesting life, starting out in Europe, finally selling a script to Hollywood, making his name there, and then coming back post-war and seeing the devastation of his homeland. And I think here is Coe’s main point of the book: about the difference between pre- and post-war film directors.
Wilder, in his autobiographical monologue (presented as a screenplay, which was a nice touch), talks about coming back to Europe after the war and being asked to put together reels and reels of footage taken from the Nazis’ concentration camps and, understandably, being shaken. Wilder’s known for his lighter movies and possibly dismissed at the time we first meet him - the late ‘70s - for not being as serious as the new wave of “bearded young men” like Scorsese and Spielberg.
Then he talks about trying to buy the rights to Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark, which was eventually adapted by Spielberg as Schindler’s List. But then Wilder says he wouldn’t have made as good a film as Spielberg anyway, and I think that’s because Wilder saw the raw footage of the Holocaust and was one of the first people to assemble it for presentation to the world. His reaction to such trauma was to keep it at arm’s length by making comedic, fun movies; Spielberg and the other post-war directors are able to so fully embrace darkness on film because they never had to face it in reality like Wilder did.
It’s a thoughtful point and, like the concept of this novel, makes me wonder what drove Coe to pursue it and turn it into this book. Movies have always been a feature of his novels so it’s not totally surprising but it’s still a strange choice. It is fascinating though to see a great public figure at the tail end of their career and life and seeing how they handle diminished fame and fortune.
The novel’s framing device of Calista in her 50s looking back is dull and makes for a slow entrance into the novel proper - I suppose it was needed to jump around in Wilder’s life to show him at different points after the Fedora shoot but it’s not terribly engrossing. Nor is much about Calista as a character - her film ignorance, her loves; eh, I didn’t care and her reciting film trivia word for word isn’t as funny as Coe thinks.
It’s also a very easy to put down book because there’s no real tension or overarching story that’s setting a pace and making you keep turning the pages. The Fedora shoot wasn’t dramatic or that special, though you learn that Wilder’s directing style was quite stiff - insisting that each word be read as it appears in the script with zero improvisation from the actor - which upset the lead actress in the early days of filming.
The book is very informative though. I knew nothing about Billy Wilder before reading it and now know a great deal about him both personally and professionally - and I’ll keep an eye out for his movies in the future and see what he was like as a visual storyteller.
Like the comparison of the two movies Calista goes to see towards the end of the book - Taxi Driver and The Shop Around the Corner - Mr Wilder and Me is not an exciting, dangerous story like Scorses’s masterpiece but more like the amiable and warm Ernst Lubitsch film, and deliberately so. Wilder loved Lubitsch and chose to make films like his - it’s fitting that Coe should write a novel about Wilder in the same vein.
And that’s what Mr Wilder and Me is: a thoughtful, pleasant read if not that compelling or memorable a narrative, with an excellent portrait of a larger-than-life film artist at its core. I liked it well enough but it’s not among Jonathan Coe’s best novels.
Rating: really liked it
When I reviewed Coe's last novel Middle England, I started by saying "For me, Jonathan Coe's novels feel like a form of literary comfort food or guilty pleasure". That statement applies just as much this time round - once again the book is warm, witty and perceptive, though if I were being hypercritical I would say that all the best lines in it are direct quotes from Wilder. I should also say that I am no film buff, so won't comment on the cinema history and film criticism elements.
The core story is Wilder's - specifically his 1978 film Fedora, a low-budget film about an ageing actress that was funded by a German company after he failed to interest Hollywood's major players, and also his past as a German Jew who escaped to Hollywood via Paris in the early stages of Nazi rule but left behind a family who were not so lucky. The narrative framework is provided by the narrator Calista, an entirely fictional composer of film music and mother of young adult children, who is also now looking back at her life in late middle age and thinking she is no longer needed. Calista recounts her unlikely meeting with Wilder, and her involvement in the filming of Fedora, initially in Greece as an interpreter and then in Munich as a PA for Wilder's writing partner Iz Diamond.
As always with Coe, the story is a pleasure to read, but I can't quite bring myself to give it five stars because I can see the authorial machinery rather too clearly.
Rating: really liked it
I found this novel interesting since, though I’d seen or heard of several of his films, I didn’t know very much about Billy Wilder as a director or about his personal life. All the detail we read here was fascinating for me - about Billy Wilder himself, his European roots, the actors and screenwriters he worked with and the mechanics of shooting movies.
I confess I didn’t take much else from this story. I can appreciate the points made about the style of movies from the first half of the 20th century compared with the in-your-face realism, and often brutality, of those made from the 60s onwards but I couldn’t engage overmuch with the kind of nostalgia we are invited to embrace here.
An entertaining read, lacking much of the humour I was expecting from Jonathan Coe in what came across as a heartfelt homage to the films of yesteryear and Wilder in particular.
With thanks to Penguin, Viking via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Oddly, I have never read anything by Jonathan Coe. As such, possibly this was not the best place for me to start – no film fan, I have difficulty sitting through anything and going to the cinema is tortuous for me (why watch something when you can read ?). However, I have seen, “Some Like It Hot,” as a child, so I was, at least, aware of who Billy Wilder was, which was a start.
This is the story of Calista, who first met Mr Wilder on a backpacking trip around the States, when a girl that she meets while travelling takes her to a dinner to meet a friend of her father’s. When her love-struck travelling companion leaves her in the lurch, literally in the restaurant, the two, older couples they are eating with, are extremely kind to her. Calista, who has shown no interest in Hollywood prior to the meeting, becomes a bit of a film obsessive – albeit in learning facts gleaned from books, rather than watching the movies themselves.
Later, Mr Wilder contacts her and she finds herself on the set of ‘Fedora,’ first as an interpreter and later as something more integral and involved. This is the story of Billy Wilder’s personal history and of Calista’s attempts to come to terms with the fact she no longer feels relevant in either her career, or the lives of her children. A very warm and enjoyable read, which is very poignant. I received a copy of the book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
Rating: really liked it
Don't be alarmed, but Jonathan Coe has just resurrected my late father, I.A.L. Diamond. He has also performed this miracle on Mr. Billy Wilder. We see this feat through the eyes of Calista, a young Anglo-Greek woman who weightlessly falls from a gap year trip into the Bavarian den of the two ageing lions, making their final stab at cinematic relevance in the last notable Wilder film, "Fedora". Mr. Coe has always used cinema, good and bad, to illuminate aspects of character and society, and he's done it here with wit and affection and gravitas. And yes, I am currently in tears.
Rating: really liked it
(3.75) Because of the timing of the books’ release, I couldn’t help but think of this as derivative of A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson: a woman looks back at a golden summer spent in Greece in the orbit of a famous man (Leonard Cohen there; Billy Wilder here). I’m a Wilder fan, but had never heard of the film he was making in 1977,
Fedora, and didn’t know any details of his personal life. I found the overall plot a little lite, particularly the framing story about Calista in the present day, and was thinking I’d give 3 stars, but my opinion shot up all because of a 50-page sequence modeled on a film script (with scene directions, voice overs, etc.) in which Calista records Billy’s experiences in Europe before and after the Second World War, making a documentary on the concentration camps and always, always (view spoiler)
[looking out for his mother, whom he never found (hide spoiler)]. I also liked the detail of Al Pacino ordering a cheeseburger wherever he goes, even if it’s not on the menu.
[Awful typo (the reverse of one I found in English Pastoral, which is about farming!): “sown into the lining” instead of
sewn on the top of p. 135 in the UK hardback.]
Rating: really liked it
“When the world is catapulting towards change, do you hold on for dear life or decide it’s time to let go?”
This story is another delicious example of the blended fact and fiction novels, which are becoming so popular now, and this one is executed to perfection, by an author who is new to me.
No fast-paced action, in fact, no rushing whatsoever. No in-depth twisted storyline to unravel, or dark and hidden clues to fathom, no ‘bad guy’ to chase down. This is simply a story to luxuriate in, to savour every word and nuance, to get to know the characters, and to fully appreciate the quality of the well edited research and exquisite prose, which put me completely at ease and nicely relaxed. It seems that for almost everyone who has read and reviewed this book, the journey has been a unique and totally different experience to that of the next person, so opening that first page really needs to happen without any pre conceived ideas about the storyline, or expectations for an outcome. You simply need to enjoy the ride!
Narrated in a single voice, that of Calista herself, this is a story told in dual time frames, spanning several decades and finds her visiting many different countries, whilst enjoying various new, exciting and life-changing experiences. It is therefore even more astonishing to discover that in fact, the characters of Calista and her family are just about the only part of the storyline which is fictional, their backstory being seamlessly and artistically woven and blended with the many factual layers, into a complete and powerful package, which stands up well to scrutiny.
Compellingly written with total authority and confidence, the author is an artist with words, allowing the visually descriptive narrative and dialogue to transport me, a neutral observer, along on Calista’s adventures, with the sights, sounds and smells being oh! so close, yet tantalisingly out of reach! In this well constructed, multi-faceted storyline, there are many touching and emotional personal vignettes playing out simultaneously, with those parallel factual and fictional elements intertwined to enrich and add depth to the experience, as I glimpsed inside the rather fractured world of the rich and famous.
As Calista reminisces back to the heady days of the late 1970s, we essentially witness a rather morose and defeated Wilder, who together with his long time career associate, Diamond, realise and are trying to come to terms with, the prospect that the sands of time have rather caught up with, and indeed, overtaken them. This begs the question is Fedora, ostensibly a new film they are collaborating on, about a rather faded film star, really a personal homage to a director and writer, who once in the limelight, now find themselves retreating ever further into the shadows, with their rather dated style of film. Contrast that with the young Calista, whose stars are definitely in the ascent, as Wilder and Diamond take her under their collective wings and offer her an opening into their glamorous world. Calista seems to have the knack of bringing out the best in both men, with her innocent guile and charm. Gradually Wilder, an Austrian by birth, opens up to her about his highly emotional past and his constant striving to bring closure to the personal wartime events which have helped to shape him and his career. This vulnerability and desperate intensity, is laid bare for all to see and hear, during a post filming dinner at which all the crew are present, when his pain of a lifetime spent searching for a sense of belonging and answers, pours forth like a scripted speech from one of his own films.
Fast forward to the present day and in a bittersweet parallel, we find Calista struggling with her own ‘raison d’etre’, now that her family seems to have discovered their independence, her job as a full time mother is taking on a new background role and her career composing film scores has been confined to back burners of time. Can it be that she is able to manipulate and call upon that one final endgame, which will offer a lifeline to stave off her own personal lengthening shadows and approaching sands of time.
There are many background characters, who although they all have their part to play, don’t form an intrinsic part of the wider story. However, the principle characters are multi-faceted, well developed and defined, quite relatable and easy to invest in. Calista manages to connect with Wilder, Diamond and their wives with an innocence and naivety which is really surprising, drawing them out and forcing them to interact honestly with each other, in ways which they hadn’t done for some time. There is a vulnerability and emotional complexity about them which is both poignant and touching. Scratch the surface and there is a genuine depth and inclusivity. The scene between Wilder and Calista at the cheese farm, is definitely one to look out for
When I came to this story, I knew very little about the legend that is Billy Wilder and I was familiar with just a small handful of the many films he had made. To some extent this is simply a potted memoir of the man, however introducing the fictional character of Calista to the equation, has give the words an added dimension. The icing on the cake of this story, which rather reads like a film script itself, would be to see the book optioned for film in the future, thus completing that third dimension.
Rating: really liked it
Mr Wilder & Me is the long-awaited return of literary sensation Jonathan Coe and is a potent blend of historical fact and fiction, which explores ageing; the vastly different stages of life and transference between them; and the fleeting transience and impermanent nature of memory. It's the late 70s and we are introduced to twentysomething Anglo-Greek musician Calista Frangopoulou who somehow incomprehensibly, to even herself, becomes the translator to prominent Hollywood director Billy Wilder having encountered him in LA and a short time later finds herself on the set of Corfu-based Fedora, one of Wilder’s final flings with the movie industry before hopefully going out on a high note; Calista is very much in her prime and enjoying all of the opportunities this brings. This is juxtaposed with Wilder’s slowing pace of life, which certifies a changing of the guard in LA. Fast forward over four decades and we find Calista in her 60s settled with husband, Geoffrey, and two grown twin daughters, Francesca and Ariane. She feels underappreciated, almost unwanted at times and it is the ageing process that has stirred these increasingly unhelpful thoughts and feelings of hopelessness, and she's not alone.
The celebrated and renowned Wilder is past his peak in 1977, and he knows it. He remains revered as an elite director but with focus having shifted to the new and upcoming in the field, he finds this ever burgeoning lack of interest in him and his movies tough to bear but the entertainment industry has always been a fickle beast, however, this doesn't make him feel any less lost. Moving from being hot property to past his sell-by date Wilder no longer at the cutting edge of the movie market, as a fad for high-stakes, all-action thrillers establishes itself over his more brooding and probing themes. Calista recognises that he is haunted by his past. An Austrian Jew, he fled Europe before the war, and has no idea what happened to his mother, searching concentration camp footage for her. This leads him to direct a movie based on the Nazi atrocities, and Calista travels with him to Munich in order to film the scenes. His tragic past is as traumatic as anyone who was impacted by the horrors of the inhuman regime, but it is a side to him few people have witnessed.
This coming-of(-old)-age tale is both charming and bittersweet — we feel Calista and Wilder’s intense longing for days, and decades, past and their sadness at growing old, which I am quite certain every one of us can relate to in some capacity. Coe pens a wistful and wonderfully nostalgic paean to looking back fondly whilst still remembering to continue to move forward regardless of the difficulties in accepting our changing self. At its heart, this is a majestic character study of both Calista and Wilder as they journey through life. It's honest and heartfelt, lyrical yet languid and a deceptively simple novel, which demands to be drunk in slowly so that the flavour can be savoured. The sights, sounds and smells its descriptions evoke place you right there on the sun-drenched isle of Corfu or wherever the setting may be, and not only is it a feast for the senses but also the imagination and is a sheer literary delight. It's been clear for some time just how special Coe is as a writer, and this may just be his most compelling, immersive and moving work to date. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Viking for an ARC.
