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Book cover for "The Pieces" by James Wilson

The Pieces

By James Wilson

In 1968, English folk-singer Adam Earnshaw vanishes during a tour of the U.S. What happened to him? In The Pieces, a dazzling array of voices – university friends, lovers, fellow-musicians, a pirate radio DJ, an American record producer, an obsessive, self-destructive teenage girl – contribute their own fragments to the puzzle. In the end, there is an answer. But when it comes, it forces us to rethink everything we have just read. 

 

James Wilson is known for his ability to inhabit different times and lives. In this, his seventh work of fiction, he brings his unique gift to bear – with the ambition and breadth of a Victorian novelist – on the late 1960s, with all their anxiety, hope, recklessness, excess, energy and idealism. The result is a vivid, hugely entertaining, portrait of England at a pivotal moment in its recent history, when British and American artists and musicians were together forging a revolutionary popular culture that continues to shape our world today. 

Superbly written and plotted, by turns funny and moving, and teeming with unforgettable characters, The Pieces carries readers back to that era – and shows them why it was so momentous – like no other novel before.

I was at Oxford at the same time as the protagonist of this novel, and went on to become a professional composer and studio music producer. So I am familiar with the landscape in which The Pieces is set, and was immediately struck by how vividly and convincingly James Wilson brings it back to life. 

But the book is much more than a recreation of a pivotal time in our recent history: it’s a powerful, dramatic and colourful narrative, which had me gripped from start to end. I was particularly taken by the unusual way the story unfolds, told by a rich cast of characters, each one recognisable as a type, yet each also credible as an individual. Together they provide a set of mirrors through which we gradually discover the real Adam Earnshaw – a charismatic singer-songwriter struggling to understand the world he finds himself in. The result is compelling, deeply moving – and unputdownable. 

David Stoll, composer

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