Ray Connolly_61

"The best novel about movie making ever written" says Sunday Express on the cover, and I'm not arguing. 'Shadows on a Wall' by Ray Connolly is terrific. It's a fat page-turner with a rowdy cast of characters set in the surrealist la la land of film studios, screenwriters, producers and actors, as a little play about Napoleon morphs into the most expensive movie ever made. Connolly is a screenwriter, so I imagine that's why this novel rings true and—first published in 1994—holds up wonderfully well. The perfect companion piece to this novel is journalist Julie Salamon's 'The Devil's Candy'—her brilliant and biting account of the making of 'Bonfire of the Vanities', released in 1992.