Fame and Fortune

by Frederic Raphael (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $4.28

  With a rich cast, a fast-moving story line, and dialogue that displays all the wit and panache for which Frederic Raphael is famous, Fame and Fortune - recently dramatised on BBC Radio 4 - is a powerful sequel to his bestselling classic, The Glittering Prizes. Success as a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter has brought fame and its pleasures to Adam Morris, whose public cynicism continues to mask his private anguish. He still moves warily amongst his ambitious Cambridge contemporaries, but for them, as for him, success has proved a double-edged sword. For Adam, a startling sexual encounter, as well as the defection of his son, Tom, and his brilliant daughter, Rachel, threaten to capsize his complacency and his marriage. In Mrs Thatcher's golden years, money and power can do little to ensure the glittering prizewinners from the trip-wires that lace their upward path - or from the violence and death that stalks and strikes. Frederic Raphael has written more twenty novels, with a variety of settings, from post-war England, Greece during the Civil War, South America in the time of Caudillos, France in the Occupation and today's United States. He has also written five volumes of short stories, as well as many film and television scripts. He has written biographies of Byron and of W.Somerset Maugham.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.36

  Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes was the basis of the most enduringly famous series of the 1970s. Adam Morris and his Cambridge generation were observed with wry accuracy as they went in pursuit of happiness, to discover varying degrees of satisfaction, success and material comfort.In Fame And Fortune , Raphael picks up their story from the moment when, in May 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to power. Adam is now in his late forties, still married to Barbara, successful enough to live well, educate their children (Tom is now at Cambridge, Rachel soon will be) and dream of a time when he can write the books he really wants to write, without being tempted back, again, into showbiz and hollywood by old friend, Mike Clode.As glitteringly witty as its predecessor, Fame And Fortune is dense with irony and a sense of the fragility of the success and happiness which Adam and his friends enjoy. Violence and death play their cruel, sudden parts in all their lives. Intricately plotted and stingingly observed, Fame And Fortune is an often poignant and always irresistibly readable portrait of Adam Morris, his family and his generation.