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Sunnyside

On sale

1st April 2010

Price: £10.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340829837

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From the author of CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL comes a panoramic tale of power and stardom, ambition and dreams that reaches from California in 1916 to the battlefields of France and the icy wastes of northern Russia. At the heart of its enthralling cast of characters – which includes a thieving Girl Scout, Mary Pickford, a charismatic British general and even the dog Rin Tin Tin – lies the troubled genius that was Charlie Chaplin.

Here America debuts on the world stage in the Great War, Hollywood blossoms into a global phenomenon, and the cult of celebrity is born. Here, in a novel as darkly comic as it is thrilling, the modern age dawns.

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Reviews

Christian House, <i>Independent on Sunday</i>
A kaleidoscopic tale of romance and intrigue...This is a book to remind you of the pleasures of chuckling aloud in public...After a dazzling debut, he has managed to pull off a consummate, ambitious encore. Sunnyside is a cane-twirling, bowler-doffing triumph
Dominic Sandbrook, <i>Daily Telegraph</i>
Dazzling...a gloriously enjoyable read, with pleasures on almost every page: a novel of which Chaplin, the supreme entertainer, would have been proud
Aravind Adiga, <i>Financial Times</i>
An insanely ambitious novel...entertaining and thought-provoking
Michael Saler, <i>Times Literary Supplement</i>
A rare fictional portrayal of this enigmatic figure, and Gold's rendition is marvellous...a nuanced portrait that is as moving, and at times as funny, as Chaplin's best works
<i>Time Out</i>
An epic - and suitably cinematic - tale...Gold displays a prodigious gift for storytelling, with a succession of scintillating set pieces and audacious one-liners...fantastic
Tina Jackson, <i>Metro</i>
Gold has matched a big subject with a suitably big treatment...Chapin himself appears as one of this sprawling, ingenious novel's three central characters as Gold borrows all sorts of silent movie cinematic devices - cliffhangers, rescue scenes, set pieces - and transfers them into fictional form with cracking dash and verve.
<i>Elle</i>
Imaginative, romantic, it's what reading was invented for
Helen Echlin, <i>Observer</i>
Entrancing...Reading SUNNYSIDE feels a bit like watching a historical epic with a staggering budget...Gold keeps you busy ogling the lavish costumes and spectacular sets. But he also knows when to reward you with a marvellous close-up.
Junot Díaz
A breathless stupendous novel...From lighthouse to Hollywood to starlets to war to stardom to madness to genius Gold's startling narrative carries us across the world and back. Gold proves himself yet again to be the hungriest craftiest funniest and most humane novelist we have.
<i>Publishers Weekly</i>
An elegant blend of reality and fiction, war drama and Hollywood glamour . . . It is wholly exhausting and entirely satisfying: to borrow an idea from Chaplin's great personal-artistic quest in the book, it's a work as good as Gold.
<i>Booklist</i>
This brimming saga begins in 1916 with a bang and never lets up...The cascade of historic details Gold generates is breathtaking, but it is his electrifying characters, wildly inventive action replete with comedic mishaps and witty dialogue, and trenchant insights into the absurdity of war and the mythic dimension of movies that gather force and velocity to make this such a hilarious, brilliant, and transporting novel.