Book description
Britain is reeling from reports of a terrorist bomb on a film set
that has killed a hundred people and, possibly, the brightest star in
Hollywood, Thomas Bayne. Caught up in the middle of the national
mourning is Susan Mantle - a rather hopeless London tour-guide - who
is seen crying on a park bench and is taken up by the media as a
symbol of the blitz spirit, appearing on the rolling news with the
headline 'beautiful but crying'.
She is crying, though, for other reasons: she's just been told by a
clairvoyant that she is about to die. Reason and the real world are
quickly relinquished as Susan is swept into a media maelstrom,
becoming the baffled and increasingly unwilling star of reality TV.
Buffeted by the demands of her new public, and her private terrors
about her own mortality, Susan starts to lose control of everything.
Glyn Maxwell has written in many genres, but is particularly
celebrated as a dramatist and poet. He has won a number of prizes for
his work, including the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber
Memorial Prize.
