Stars and Bars by novelist William Boyd is one of the comic masterpieces
All Henderson Dores dreams of is fitting in. But America, land of the loony millionaire and the subway poet, down-home Bible-basher and sharp-suited hood, of paralysing personal frankness and surreally fantasized facilities, is hard enough for an Englishman to fit in to. Henderson could never shed enough inhibitions to become just another weirdo. Or could he?
This hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy, which Boyd also adapted for screen for the 1980s film starring Daniel Day Lewis, was described in the Guardian as, 'Splittingly shrewd and engaging ... with an extra and uneasy little something fretting away at the ribald content'.
Stars and Bars will be loved by fans of Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa, as well as readers of David Nicholls, Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel.
'The wry laughter never stops ... the shrewdest pages yet from a master of wittymanipulation' Observer
WILLIAM BOYD has received world-wide acclaim for his novels.They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize) An Ice-cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 BookerPrize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner ofthe 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet), Restless (2006) (Costa Book Award, Novel of the Year 2006), Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009) and Waiting For Sunrise (2011).
'One of the comic masterpieces' Daily Telegraph
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Henderson Dores is an Englishman in New York - and completely out of his depth.
He should be concentrating on his job as an art assessor, but his complicated personal life keeps intruding. And that's before we even get to his sense of alienation, of being a fish out of water. For Henderson is a shy man lost in a country of extraverts and weirdos. Subway poets, loony millionaires, Bible-bashers and sharp-suited hoods stalk him wherever he goes. But it is only when he's sent to America's deep South to examine a rare collection of paintings that matters take a life-threatening turn. Still, if it doesn't kill you, they say it can only make you stronger . . .
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'Boyd's humour, timed to a tee, always raps out the truth' Mail on Sunday
'Extremely funny. Boyd does not pass up a single comic turn' Sunday Telegraph
'Splittlingly shrewd and engaging' Guardian
'The wry laughter never stops . . . the shrewdest pages yet from a master of witty manipulation' Observer
