Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2014
416 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Leaving behind an emotionally disastrous childhood in a provincial northern town, budding playwright Luke Kanowski begins a new life in London that includes Paul Driscoll, an aspiring producer who will become his best friend, and Leigh Radley, Paul's girlfriend. Talented and ambitious, the trio found a small theater company that enjoys unexpected early success. Then, one fateful evening, Luke meets Nina Jacobs, a dynamic and emotionally damaged actress he cannot forget, even after she drifts into a marriage with a manipulative theater producer.
As Luke becomes a highly sought after playwright, he stumbles in love, caught in two triangles where love requited and unrequited, friendship, and art will clash with terrible consequences for all involved.
Fallout is an elegantly crafted novel whose characters struggle to escape the various cataclysms of their respective pasts. Falling in love convinces us we are the pawns of the gods; Fallout brings us firmly into the psyche of romantic love - its sickness and its ecstasy.
"Starred Review. An intoxicating, deeply romantic novel of theater, love, and friendship…With both microscopic precision and operatic emotions, Sadie Jones perfectly captures the exhilaration of the young and the talented as they find their footing in both art and love." - Booklist
"An engrossing melodrama of theater life... Her talent emerges most in the absorbing plot, which convincingly shows how friends can be torn apart by lust and ambition." - Publishers Weekly
"Jones's intricate, complex plot, sympathetically drawn characters, and authentic depictions of damaged genius make an unassailable claim for the power of a writer's detailed observation in the face of formula fiction." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo by Charles Hopkinson
Sadie Jones is the author of five novels, including The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in Great Britain and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the enchanting, hard-hitting novel set on the island of Cyprus during the British occupation, Small Wars; her most successful, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests, beloved of Ann Patchett and Jackie Winspear, among others; the romantic novel set in London's glamorous theatre world, Fallout; and the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Snakes. Sadie Jones lives in London.
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