Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool.

Gloria Grahame was a star of the golden age of Hollywood and an Oscar winning actress. Twenty years later, suffering from cancer, she travels to England to star in a play where her health takes a turn for the worse. Days away from dying and refusing medical treatment, Gloria telephones Peter Turner, an ex lover who is also an actor. Peter and Gloria were an unlikely couple, he is thirty years younger than her and at the time that the book covers he is staying with his colourful working class Liverpudlian family. His family take Gloria into their lively home and pitch in to take care of her until her children arrive from America to fly her home to New York where she shortly dies.

This is a brief memoir of not only these few days but also of the couples' unusual love affair which is recounted in flashbacks.

  Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is an strange little book that has recently been revived and made into a film. It's quite touching and it's surprisingly amusing considering that it's subject matter is so grim. The style of writing is rather odd, it feels very flat and reads almost as a script would but as the author is an actor rather than a writer maybe that's not surprising.

I didn't love this and it's not the sort of book that I usually read, but it is a touching story and the warmth of Peter's family is very apparent. I'm not much of a film buff and prior to reading this I hadn't heard of Gloria Grahame, but if you are a fan of either Gloria or old Hollywood movies I'm sure this will be of interest. If, like me, you aren't then you may want to sit this one out.