The American No: 'Richly imagined and extraordinarily affecting... Everett is a terrific storyteller' Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times

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'Full of kindness, even tenderness... He is a brilliant writer: opulently gossipy as few are these days, but also truthful, witty, wise and stoical' Rachel Cooke, Observer

'Everett is a brilliant writer - funny, waspish, warm and seductive' Camilla Long, The Times

'[An] eccentric and exquisite new collection of stories' Tatler

Richly imagined and extraordinarily affecting... Everett is a terrific storyteller' Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times

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 middle-aged American-Russian 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, touching and witty 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.

Reviews

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 * Guardian, Book of the Day *
Everett is a brilliant writer - funny, waspish, warm and seductive * Camilla Long, The Times *
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 -- Hadley Freeman * Sunday Times *
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 -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *
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 -- Erica Wagner * Tatler *
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 * Nicola Shulman, TLS Books of the Year *
Burnished with the kind of detail only a Hollywood insider would know * Eithne Farry, Daily Mail *
Everett pulls it off thanks to a natural abundance of charm * Irish Times *
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 * Hadley Freeman, Guardian, praise for Rupert Everett *
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 * Rachel Cooke, Observer, praise for Rupert Everett *
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 * Telegraph, praise for Rupert Everett *
A supremely gifted writer * Lynn Barber, The Times, praise for Rupert Everett *
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 * Daily Telegraph, praise for Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins *
Most of all he is just a very good writer indeed * Julie Burchill, Observer, praise for Vanished Years *

Author Bio

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.