Book
Fascination
This collection moves across countries and decades, following people caught by desire, vanity, disappointment and sudden changes of fortune. The stories range from nineteenth-century Russia and 1930s Germany to wartime Los Angeles and contemporary Britain, shifting easily between artists, travellers, lovers and people trying to conceal the consequences of earlier choices.
Despite the variety of settings, the stories are linked by the instability of ordinary lives. Chance meetings uncover old attachments, private performances collapse, and apparently minor decisions reshape relationships. Boyd uses the short form to compress whole histories into brief encounters while allowing period detail to emerge through character rather than exposition.
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