The American No

About the Book

'Rupert Everett is one of my favourite writers. He's brilliantly witty, acutely perceptive and highly sensitive, and his writing is incredibly good. His stories are both moving and tender, often outrageous, and funny too. A gifted storyteller' Santa Montefiore

Eight stories of love and loss, drama and glamour, hope and rejection, from a writer at the height of his powers.

In Rupert Everett's first, glorious collection of stories, he takes us on an exhilarating journey with a cast of extraordinary characters. A blackly humorous story of a chaotic and emotional funeral in Paris. Oscar Wilde's last night in Paris, vividly evocative, unflinching and elegiac. A Russian-American countess who confronts sex and age in a Wiltshire teashop. The ferociously unforgiving life of an L.A. talent agency and the unexpected twist that launches a completely different kind of career. The deathbed confession of a woman who left home for 1850s India, never to return. A story of emigration, love and grief. And a beautifully evocative and touching portrayal of Proust's creative life and his childhood.

A brilliantly witty, funny and tender collection of stories that draws on the wealth of film and TV ideas Rupert Everett has created over the course of his career, The American No will delight and surprise his many fans.

'A supremely gifted writer' Lynn Barber, The Times

About the Author :
Rupert Everett is an actor, writer and director. He has appeared in film and TV productions including Napoleon, My Policeman, Adult Material, The Serpent Queen, Funny Woman, An Ideal Husband and My Best Friend's Wedding. On stage his work includes Another Country, The Vortex, Pygmalion, Amadeus and The Judas Kiss. His first memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, was a Sunday Times bestseller and its sequel Vanished Years won the Sheridan Morley prize for biography. His documentary series Love for Sale won the Grierson award and his film of Oscar Wilde's later years, The Happy Prince was released in 2018 to widespread acclaim.

Review :
This is a storyteller unafraid to spike his black comedy with sudden and strongly brewed emotion... Individually, the stories are exhilarating; together, they add up to an intriguing self-portrait of an artist at work, presenting us with the multiple facets of an undaunted imagination, recut, repolished and ready to shine in the dark Everett is a brilliant writer - funny, waspish, warm and seductive Richly imagined and extraordinarily affecting... Everett is a terrific storyteller... far harder on himself than he is on his character, and his descriptions of his failed projects and collapsing physicality are always hilarious Full of kindness, even tenderness... His feeling for failure is a writerly gift, throwing a navy shadow over even his funniest and most scabrous lines... He is a brilliant writer: opulently gossipy as few are these days, but also truthful, witty, wise and stoical Everett has a flair for historical fiction...What were once ideas for screenplays have become stories - and are all the better for the years of marinating. There is some real depth and richness here, as well as a sharp critique of the mores of La-La Land The best thing I've read this autumn is Rupert Everett's "The End of Time", in his new collection of stories, The American No... Everett gets Proust: his social and intellectual range, his eyes and ears, his modernity, his voyeurism, his sublime observational comedy Burnished with the kind of detail only a Hollywood insider would know Everett pulls it off thanks to a natural abundance of charm The joy of Everett as a writer has always been his pitilessly clear-eyed perspective... every sentence [he] writes rings with his personality, and it's a personality that has always been irresistible Everett is a deliciously gifted writer. Nothing and no one escapes his attention...However wasteful and capricious his first profession, we know that he is perfectly safe. The blank page will henceforth always be his. He is a writer to his (aching) bones His resilient energy, sharp-eyed intelligence and keen sense of the ridiculous, as well as his capacity for short-term enjoyment of life's sensual pleasures, infuse his writing with a warm glow...the sheer force of his personality is irresistible and there isn't a dull moment A supremely gifted writer What makes this autobiography a (novelistic) masterpiece is the way he is acutely aware of the melancholia and pain that are the other side of hedonism's coin Most of all he is just a very good writer indeed