Fallout: A Novel

by Sadie Jones

Overview

A deeply affecting love story set in the gritty yet magnificent theater world of 1970’s London by the award-winning, bestselling Sadie Jones, author of The Uninvited Guests and The Outcast

Luke is a young playwright: intense, magnetic and hungry for experience. Fleeing a disastrous upbringing, he arrives in London and moves into a flat with Paul, an aspiring producer, and the beautiful, fiery Leigh. The three of them set up a radical theatre company, their friendship forged in rehearsal rooms above pubs, candlelit power cuts, and smoky late-night parties, part of a thrilling new generation of writers, directors, and rising voices. When Nina, a fragile actress, strays towards their group, Luke is captivated by the allure of a kindred damaged soul, and the balance between the friends is threatened. Torn between loyalty, desire, and his own painful past, everything Luke values, even the promise of the future, is in danger. Suddenly the fallout threatens to be immense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062292827
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/05/2015
Series:	P.S. Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

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 TimesBook 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 other; the romantic novel set in London's glamorous theatre world, Fallout; and most recently, the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Snakes. Sadie Jones lives in London.

 

Editorial Reviews

The strength of Fallout is the insistent thread of hope that runs through all the humiliation and bad behavior. The result is…a fuller, more emotionally satisfying story.

The Wall Street Journal

Emotionally charged.

Glamour

On a par with the Barneses and McEwans of this parish… Jones’s gift - like all great writers - is to leave us wanting so desperately to believe that the story will continue without us once the scenery has been cleared away.

Elizabeth Day

An intoxicating and immersive read... It is a fraught and compelling novel; one that replays itself uncomfortably in the mind long after it is finished.

Lucy Atkins

Beautifully written... An intense and absorbing story.

Deirdre O'Brien

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 (starred review)

Jones is unflinching as she plots the course of fallout with no shelter, of wounded lives undone by desperation in love and art.

The New York Times

The novel is at its best when the characters quietly seek an audience for their pleasures, their pains, and the ‘more permanent wounds of their longer lives waiting, undiscovered.’

New Yorker

[A] wonderful read. Surprising depth of character, accidents of fate that feel like life, and emotional FALLOUT that heralds new maturity, make this a very satisfying novel.

Not Another Book Review (Blog)

An intelligent, pacy tale of pretty, talented people, striving for recognition but held back by their past…. Every summer needs a One Day-style read; this book is a contender for that crown.

Anne Ashworth

Jones highlights beautifully the energetic, naive, cheap red-wine fug of the Seventies start-up, and its decadent antithesis, the emptiness of fatally compromised success.

Catherine Taylor

Sadie Jones has an unerring ability to delve into the depths of characters and reveal both their strengths and their weaknesses.

Di Speirs in Psychologies

Fallout is both deliciously gobble-able and carefully constructed.

Holly Williams

An enthralling tale of lust, ambition and friendship.

Hello!

This absorbing and romantic novel about love, art and the importance of being true to yourself will draw you in and keep you there until the very last page.

Mernie Gilmore

[Fallout] cements her reputation as a writer in the style of William Boyd; able to take on a variety of styles and mould them to her own voice.

Red

The novel is at its best when the characters quietly seek an audience for their pleasures, their pains, and the ‘more permanent wounds of their longer lives waiting, undiscovered.’

New Yorker

[Fallout] cements her reputation as a writer in the style of William Boyd; able to take on a variety of styles and mould them to her own voice.

Red

Jones is unflinching as she plots the course of fallout with no shelter, of wounded lives undone by desperation in love and art.

The New York Times

02/03/2014
Jones’s latest (after The Uninvited Guests) follows the career of Luke Kanowski, who leaves behind his dysfunctional family in Northern England and moves to London in the late 1960s to pursue a career as a playwright. He is soon befriended by aspiring producer Paul Driscoll and Paul’s girlfriend, Leigh Radley; together, the three start a small theater company called Graft. The trio’s fulfilling artistic life together gradually comes under the strain of Luke’s compulsive womanizing and Leigh’s unrequited attraction to him. Their rocky triangle is further threatened by Nina Jacobs, who has been groomed by her mother, a failed actress, for a life on the stage; Luke becomes obsessed with Nina’s melancholy beauty, but her marriage to an abusive theater producer, Tony, complicates their romance. As Luke and Nina embark on a torrid love affair, Luke finds success on his own as a playwright and is forced to choose between his hard-to-please beloved and the friends who have nursed his ambitions. An engrossing melodrama of theater life, the novel’s only drawback is Jones’s tendency toward precious turns of phrase. Her talent emerges most in the absorbing plot, which convincingly shows how friends can be torn apart by lust and ambition. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernert Company. (May)

Publishers Weekly