Review

A fine novel. (The Sunday Times)

This is a book about love: love of women, love of men, love of art, love of comedy . . . What catapults the reader straight into Hollywood's Golden Age is the enormous amount of research and passion that lies behind He. When those researched details coalesce, a world of Dickens-like detail leaps off the page. (Irish Times)

It's not often you get an evocation of a friendship so deep and tender between two men in fiction . . . A wonderful story of love, of an abiding loyalty. (Declan Burke RTE)

An entertaining account of early 20th-century celebrity (Daily Express)

The life and art of Stan Laurel, from vaudeville and silent movies to the talkies and old age, is explored in this artful novel . . . It's the best tribute to this novel that by the end of it you feel you have been given the full texture of a life. (Kirkus Reviews)

Fans of Connolly will be awed at this new literary work in a very different voice (Florida Times-Union)

Part-biography, part-cinema history, part-Hollywood gossip columns . . . the ingredients all stirred dexterously together by a highly - even bizarrely - individual narrative hand . . . Wildly original in its methods, it is addictively readable in its outcome (Sydney Morning Herald)

John Connolly's new book is a fascinating look at the Golden Age of Hollywood through the eyes of one of the finest comedians ever to grace the silver screen. This is a book full of history, full of sadness and joy, replete with fascinating characters. Connolly's greatest achievement here is that he makes you forget that this is fiction, that this comes from his imagination. Connolly makes you believe that this is what Stan Laurel must have been like because it is a book that speaks true. I applaud him for that. Read it now. (SHOTS Magazine)

An invaluable feel for a period and a fascinating, if awkward personality. Writing the story as a novel rather than just a straight biography gives the tale an extra layer of humanity and reality. (Maxim Jakubowski Crime Time)

Rewarding and uplifting. Connolly has stepped outside the crime genre to publish a literary novel of real merit. (nudgebooks.com)

Book Description

An extraordinary recreation of one of the most enduring and beloved partnerships in cinema history: Laurel & Hardy.

Winner of the 2017 Ryan Tubridy Show Listener's Choice Award at the Irish Book Awards

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