True Enough
By (Author) Stephen McCauley
Granta Books
Granta Books
1st August 2006
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
813.54
Paperback
322
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 18mm
231g
Jane Cody keeps lists. After all, how else would she keep track of her life - her job producing a Boston TV show; her amiable but frankly dull second husband; and her precocious six-year-old son who doesn't do smalltalk but loves to bake. And as if that weren't enough she has an acid-tongued mother-in-law living in her barn, an arthritic malamute lodger to walk, and a dangerously seductive ex-husband on the scene.
In New York, Desmond Sullivan is fretting that his five-year relationship with smart, sweet Russell is too monogamous and settled. Perhaps a spell as writer-in-residence at Deerforth College will cure that, and also allow him to finish his biography of one of the sixties greatest forgotten mediocrities, torch singer Pauline Anderton When Jane and Desmond meet in Boston, they embark on a TV documentary about the elusive Anderton, which is to take them on a journey of self-discovery in which they learn as much about their own secrets and lies as about hers.
Reissued with McCauley's new novel, Alternatives to Sex 'McCauley is a snappy, acerbic, self-conscious satirist... There are deft descriptive touches, a stream of noirish one-liners-and a millefeuille of snarling East Coast irony' Observer 'An object lesson in cynicism... McCauley has a faultless eye for set-pieces, and he depicts his main characters with humour and conviction' Irish Times 'A Charmingly snappy book' Sunday Tribune Film in production in France
Stephen McCauley is the author of Alternatives to Sex, The Object of My Affection, made into a film starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, The Man of the House, and The Easy Way Out, all available from Granta Books. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.