I enjoyed the setting of Mr Wilder and Me, looking back at the film industry particularly focusing on the film Fedora in the late 1970s. I have to admit I wasn’t too familiar with Billy Wilder’s films, although having heard of some of the titles I can’t really say I’m a fan, so it was interesting to learn about the films. I enjoyed the way the novel blends real people into a fictional narrative, sometimes based on real events. I thought the start of the novel was stronger and did grab my attention a bit more- I wanted to know more about Calista, her current family life story and I did get drawn into the plot of reminiscing about working with Billy Wilder. However I found the second half of the novel a little slower; I thought the scripted section dragged slightly and in the end I felt like Calista’s home life story was superfluous to the plot and didn’t really go anywhere. Overall I would recommend to a Billy Wilder fan or someone who wanted to learn more about him rather than to someone who wanted a gripping novel.

A dazzler of a book, the luxury of the location. The depths into a family history. It’s all there. Fabulous book.

If you like Jonathan's work then you'll love this. A great book that is hard to put down. A book that will take your mind off 2020, a book that will just immerse you in the narative

This book is a love note to Mr Wilder and to the art of film making. If you’re like me or like Calista the main character, you’ll have no idea who Mr Wilder is in the beginning. Turns out he was a very famous director (Some Like it Hot) and we meet him as he’s making a movie called Fedora.

Like the movie Fedora, this book covers the life of famous person who’s star is on the wane. It is like a concept within a concept within a concept. We see it in the movie Fedora about an actress on the wane, we see it with Wilder who can’t get anyone in Hollywood to fund his movies, and Calista who used to be a big time movie composer but hasn’t worked in a few years. There’s even a subtle dig at a movie producer that has been dying to get his movie made for so long the initial stars he lined up and now only suitable for the roles of the grandparents.

This was a charming book but you’ll either love it or think it’s a little meh. I enjoyed reading about Wilder - he seemed like a very funny social creature. My favourite Character was Iz Diamond - he was very droll and had a dry sense of humour. I think it boils down to what kind of movie person you are. Are you the kind of person that likes Taxi Driver or an old school movie like The Apartment or anything that Lubitsche made? This definitely falls under the category of good book/interesting read but not for me. 3/5

Make yourself comfortable, get your popcorn (or crackers and brie), sit back and immerse yourself in the film-making of film director and screenwriter Billy Wilder. I can guarantee you will want to watch his films after reading this. Mainly concerned with his making of 'Fedora', one of his last films in a very changing movie industry this book goes over Billy Wilders life. The 'scenes' done as film scripts are genius. Upsetting in places but you really warm to the man and his co-writer Iz.

This is a half way through review which I'll update when I've finished.
I was intrigued from the first page, the picture painted of the mother and child on the escalator on the Underground is a familiar one and drew me in and took me on an unfamiliar journey through Europe and America in the seventies, a world of film making, of faded Hollywood lustre. The characters are complex and convincing, I want to spend time with them. I love the details that illustrate and bring to life the places and stories, the past and the present.
The god-like nature of film stars, and their entourage, mixed with the sadness and loneliness of it all.
I am not enough of a film buff to understand the references, and like Calista in the early pages I have not seen Billy Wilder's films.
I think that this book might change that.
A warm, encouraging read in the cold dark days of lockdown winter 2020.

Mr Wilder & Me is the long-awaited return of literary sensation Jonathan Coe and is a potent blend of historical fact and fiction, which explores ageing; the vastly different stages of life and transference between them; and the fleeting transience and impermanent nature of memory. It's the late 70s and we are introduced to twentysomething Anglo-Greek musician Calista Frangopoulou who somehow incomprehensibly, to even herself, becomes the translator to prominent Hollywood director Billy Wilder having encountered him in LA and a short time later finds herself on the set of Corfu-based Fedora, one of Wilder’s final flings with the movie industry before hopefully going out on a high note; Calista is very much in her prime and enjoying all of the opportunities this brings. This is juxtaposed with Wilder’s slowing pace of life, which certifies a changing of the guard in LA. Fast forward over four decades and we find Calista in her 60s settled with husband, Geoffrey, and two grown twin daughters, Francesca and Ariane. She feels underappreciated, almost unwanted at times and it is the ageing process that has stirred these increasingly unhelpful thoughts and feelings of hopelessness, and she's not alone.

The celebrated and renowned Wilder is past his peak in 1977, and he knows it. He remains revered as an elite director but with focus having shifted to the new and upcoming in the field, he finds this ever burgeoning lack of interest in him and his movies tough to bear but the entertainment industry has always been a fickle beast, however, this doesn't make him feel any less lost. Moving from being hot property to past his sell-by date Wilder no longer at the cutting edge of the movie market, as a fad for high-stakes, all-action thrillers establishes itself over his more brooding and probing themes. Calista recognises that he is haunted by his past. An Austrian Jew, he fled Europe before the war, and has no idea what happened to his mother, searching concentration camp footage for her. This leads him to direct a movie based on the Nazi atrocities, and Calista travels with him to Munich in order to film the scenes. His tragic past is as traumatic as anyone who was impacted by the horrors of the inhuman regime, but it is a side to him few people have witnessed.

This coming-of(-old)-age tale is both charming and bittersweet — we feel Calista and Wilder’s intense longing for days, and decades, past and their sadness at growing old, which I am quite certain every one of us can relate to in some capacity. Coe pens a wistful and wonderfully nostalgic paean to looking back fondly whilst still remembering to continue to move forward regardless of the difficulties in accepting our changing self. At its heart, this is a majestic character study of both Calista and Wilder as they journey through life. It's honest and heartfelt, lyrical yet languid and a deceptively simple novel, which demands to be drunk in slowly so that the flavour can be savoured. The sights, sounds and smells its descriptions evoke place you right there on the sun-drenched isle of Corfu or wherever the setting may be, and not only is it a feast for the senses but also the imagination and is a sheer literary delight. It's been clear for some time just how special Coe is as a writer, and this may just be his most compelling, immersive and moving work to date. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Viking for an ARC.

If you follow Jonathan Coe on Twitter, as I do, you will know he is very keen on the cinema and, in particular, some of the obscure classics. Indeed, the English (but not US) title of his seminal novel on Thatcherism, What a Carve-Up! comes from a film title. It is therefore not surprising that he plunges into the world of the cinema for his latest.

Billy Wilder is certainly not obscure, having directed some of the finest films between the end of World War II and the late 1960s, as well as scripting some excellent films from before that. However, his career took a downturn after that and his later films are not nearly so well-known. I have seen all his films from 1948 to 1974 and enjoyed most but found the last three less interesting than his earlier work. However, I have not only not seen his 1978 film Fedora, I had not even heard of it till I read this book, where it plays a key role. As he says in this interview Coe has been a Wilder devotee for many years.

The heroine/narrator of this book is Calista Frangopoulou. Her mother was English, her father half-Slovenian, half-Greek and she grew up in Athens. As the book starts she is nearing sixty. She writes music for films though has not had a commission for some while. Her husband, Geoffrey, is also in the film business but has to make his living teaching as his work has also dried up. They have two daughters. Francesca (Fran) is about to leave for Sydney to study at the Conservatorium. Her youngest daughter is Ariane who is about to go up to Oxford but has, in the meantime, got pregnant and plans on having an abortion. The mother-daughter relationship is somewhat strained at this time. Indeed, Calista says two things that give me a reason to go on living. I’m a good composer, and I’m a good mother but now I’m basically being told that neither of these skills is required any more.

We then dive back to when she was twenty-one and planning on travelling to the United States. She meets Gill at a Greyhound bus station and they head for Los Angeles. Gill has been invited to dinner with an elderly film director who was an old friend of her father. We have, of course, guessed who this film director is. Gill, however, has also met Stephen and would far rather be with him than with an elderly film director, so Calista is left with Wilder, his wife, I. A. L. Diamond, Wilder’s scriptwriter, and his wife. Calista knows little about cinema – she had not heard of Wilder, for example, and to Wilder’s disgust, likes Jaws – but she is young and Wilder wants to know what the young want to watch.

When, by chance, she comes up with an idea for the film, she is given the book to read and asked if she might have any other suggestions. She does not, returns the book, with her address, and heads off back home. To her surprise, some time later, she learns that the film is to be partially made in Greece and Wilder wants her as the interpreter. She is naturally very enthusiastic but somewhat surprised, when she gets there, that things are not going smoothly. Diamond, in particular is not happy with the project.

We follow the story of the making of the film which is, inevitably, fraught with problems. Calista remains involved in various capacities till the bitter end, both learning a lot (as do we) about how films are made and the trials and tribulations of all involved – actors, crew, director, money men and so on. Coe keeps the story interesting and we are often left guessing what might happen next, even if we know the outcome of the film and its lack of success. We also learn, of course, how and why she became a film composer.

Every week in its ever-diminishing Review section, The Guardian has an item called Books That Made Me where they take an author and ask him/her more or less the same questions as they have asked others. Herem for example, is the one for Coe from February 2018. One of the questions that they invariably ask is The last book that made me laugh. I always try to answer the questions for myself (yes, the answers do change for me) and I have to think hard to find an answer to this question because, quite frankly, the books I read generally do not make me laugh. I now have an answer. This book has made me laugh out loud far more than any other book I have read for a while. Obviously writing about Wilder and Diamond, humour was always going to be a big part and it certainly is here.

However, it is not all humour. Well into the book, when much of the filming had been completed, Wilder and some other key people have lunch in Munich (the money is coming from Germany) with Miklós Rózsa, the film composer, who is writing the music for the film. Calista sits next to him. Present at the meeting is a young German man – we do not who he is or why he is there – and when Wilder comments that it is strange but he has been unable to find any German who supported Hitler. Indeed, some claim they had barely heard of him and were unaware of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. The young man retorts that recent research in the US as well as in Germany, shows that claims of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust have been exaggerated.

Wilder was Jewish and his mother, grandmother and stepfather were all murdered in the Holocaust. His response is a devastating put-down of Holocaust denial. It is given (to us) in the form of a film script and he describes his personal experience, in Nazi Germany, his return to Germany and, in particular, his making of the film Death Mills about the death camps and the Holocaust. The young man leaves the room.

Coe makes an interesting and clever point about the difference between art that is intended to cheer you up and art that is intended to make you think, or, as Matthew (Calista’s boyfriend for a brief while) puts it You feel like someone’s beaten you to death. Your soul is crushed. Your faith in humanity has been shattered. You’ve never seen such ugliness, such horror on the screen before.

Calista and Matthew (the son of make-up artist on the film) are now in Paris, as final filming is taking place in France, and they make a deal to see two films, one selected by her and one by him. He chooses Taxi Driver (hence the comments above) and she chooses a favourite film of Billy Wilder, The Shop Around the Corner, which she finds cheering. (I have seen both films at least three times and enjoyed both immensely.). The discussion both between Calista and Matthew and Calista and Wilder is about the purpose of film. Wilder argues (which he later denies) that those like him who lived through a world war want something cheering and uplifting while the young US directors he calls the beards, such as Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg, do not feel the need for such films.

Of course, as I have shown, it is possible to do both. Wilder tries, in Fedora, to be serious and fails, as the film was a critical and commercial flop. However, in this book, as I have mentioned Coe writes a funny book and tells a fascinating tale of film-making but does not neglect the serious part, particularly Wilder’s tale of Holocaust denial.

The other key issue in this book is people, particularly artists, getting old and finding that their contribution is out of date and no longer welcome. We see this with Wilder and Diamond, both of whom mention it more than once, but we also see it with Calista and her husband Geoffrey, both of whom are out of work and are unable to find suitable work. Early on in the book, Calista meets an old friend who is in a similar position, trying to get a film made (he has been trying for years) based on a Kingsley Amis novel. He has consistently failed to get backing and Coe even manages a devastating dig at Amis, whom he describes as someone nobody ever talked about any more and who was now so out of fashion that you might as well try to get an adaptation of the Yellow Pages onto the screen.

Coe was approaching sixty when he wrote his book (like Calista Frangopoulou in this book). I wonder if he thought that he might be falling into this category. He must be well aware that the previous generation of English novelists, such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift, clearly have started the descent of the slippery slope. However, I can assure him that this is not the case with him. While What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy) remains, in my view, his best book, there is no doubt that his last two books – this one and Middle England – are superb novels which both provide uplifting entertainment as well as a discussion of important, serious ideas and which I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, whether they are Taxi Driver fans or The Shop Around the Corner fans or, like me, both.

Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe
I have long been a fan of Jonathan Coe and have read and enjoyed many of his novels such as What a Carve Up and the trilogy which began with The Rotter’s Club. His writing is frequently political in nature or is deeply embedded in the world of film.
In this novel we encounter Calista, an Anglo Greek girl who meets Billy Wilder but has no idea who he is. Wilder is amused by her naiveté and as the film Fedora is to be partially filmed in Greece Calista gets a job as an interpreter. We gain an insight too into the relationship between Wilder and his screenwriter Iz Diamond and the challenges of making a film.
Calista, now 60 years old, looks back on this pivotal moment in her life just as her own daughters are about to embark on important stages in their own lives. She was a young girl of 21 when she met Wilder whilst he was nearing the end of his career. The parts of the novel set in Germany are very difficult for Wilder as he struggles to come to terms with the loss of his family to the Nazis. He has a very profound reaction to Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List.
The author vividly creates the scenes in the movies and made we yearn for an age when the script of a film was so important. Many thanks to the author, the publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Thanks for the early copy.

This was the first read from Jonathan Coe and I thought it was a nice easy read that followed the telling of age shory of Caliste. Set in the 70s Hollywood as she falls in to the film industry working for a director.

Thank you, NetGalley, for letting me read this book.

Jonathan Coe creates a narrator with a crisp, sensible voice. She reminded me of the kind of heroine you get in a Mary Stewart novel - plucky, perky, intelligent. Calista is half Greek, half English, living in Athens. By luck, she meets Billy Wilder and becomes a translator on his film set, first on a Greek Island, later in Munich.

I suppose Calista is the main character here, and we watch her grow and develop, and that's all very satisfying. The real star, though, is Mr Wilder himself - if this was a film, there'd be flashbacks and gentle special effects showing us his live story - the story he tells Calista and others.

I enjoyed getting to know the great director, and I enjoyed spending time with Calista. Wilder's story is one of the quintessential stories of the 20th century, and this is a great frame for it.

A story about a Greek girl who by stroke of good fortune, joins the film crew of Billy Wilder for one summer. It is told as a memory from her later years in England while having problems with her daughter. The connection is not clear, everything leads you to think something will happen to make a point, but no, it's just recalling memories. Somewhat pleasant, but nothing special

An interesting blend of fact and fiction with an insight to the film world of the 1970's. Calista, as the main female character, explaining her meeting and subsequent relationship with Wilder, was rather dull. The scenes with Wilder, himself, were much more interesting and gave more detail about him as a man and as a director.

This book was very witty, full of phrases to think about and good writing.
Most important aspect is the characterization. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

This was a beautifully evocative novel, exquisitely written and meticulously researched. Calista is reflecting on a moment in time that changed the course of her whole life. Travelling across America with a friend Gill, she is a naive nineteen year old. When Gill and her are invited to dinner with a friend of Gill's father, little does she know that it is the famous film director, Billy Wilder. Enchanted by the glamour of Billy's world, he in turn, is also charmed by this young Greek woman. Serendipitously, his new film is to be set in Greece, and Cal is invited to the set to provide interpreter services. This time in her life is one of an awakening, sexually, intellectually and emotionally.

A human interest story that is poignant, nostalgic and wonderfully glamourous.

I loved this book! I didn't' think at the start that I would but it drew me in to a time where movie makers were idolised and films told a story. At the start we see Calista, a mother of grown up daughters and then the book takes us back to the days when Calista, was in her late teens. She went backpacking to America and met a girl she became friends with. She then finds herself having dinner with Billy Wilder and Iz Diamond, titans of the film world. Calista lived with her family in Greece and was later called upon to translate by Billy Wilder for the filming of his new movie Fedora, in Greece.
So begins her foray into the film world and her professional relationship with Iz Diamond that gets her involved in all of the filming for Fedora.
The book was fascinating and it was interesting to hear more about the history of Billy Wilder.

Jonathan Coe's new novel imagines an encounter between legendary film director and writer Billy Wilder and a young woman from Greece, Calista Frangopoulou, which takes place in 1977 as Wilder is shooting Fedora, one of his last films. The story is told by the present day Calista now married and living London and is prompted by a crisis - of sorts - in her family.

It's a gorgeous story. Wilder's life is fascinating and at times heartbreaking, and Calista is a shrewd and engaging narrator with an existence of her own - she's not just there to describe Wilder and his circle.

The book is structured around three meals. The first, a sort of prelude, takes place in Los Angeles, shortly before the main events begin. Calista is on her first independent holiday, travelling in the US and she makes friends with another young woman who has an invitation to meet Mr Wilder (he's an old acquaintance of her father) and his writing partner, Mr Diamond, for dinner. Neither girl really knows who Wilder is. Gill is mooning over a boy she's met and, half way through the meal, makes her excuses and leaves to chase after him. Calista gets drunk. Basically the evening is a roaring success, giving her a glimpse of fascinating people and circles she'd never imagined. (Coe nerds will be pleased to note Gill's family connection to, among other of his books, Expo '58).

The second meal is in Munich. Have shot external scenes in Greece, Wilder has gone on to film in a German studio (later we'll go to Paris - a tax driven schedule if ever I saw one...) Calista has been working as an assistant on the production and she's been invited along to dinner mainly to meet distinguished film composer Miklós Rózsa expressed an interest in writing music for films. Provoked by a remark from one of the financiers who's in attendance, Wilder - a refugee from the Holocaust - gives an account of his life that is rendered by Coe (or, by Coe as Calista, our witness) as film script. It shows him, careless and young, in Berlin; fleeing to Paris accompanied by his girlfriend; dumping her to go on to the US; and picking up his life in the ashes of Europe after the War. The sequence is so sad, bringing home what Wilder lost and what he, perhaps, spent the rest of his life searching for.

Finally, towards the end of filming on Fedora, and the end of the book, there's quite a different occasion when Wilder and Calista (who's despairing after being treated badly by her man) bunk off from production to eat Brie and drink wine on a farm outside Paris. Wilder offers sympathy. It's one of those unplanned, stolen occasions which are long remembered: soon after we meet Calista, we learn she's a great lover of Brie, indeed it seems to be her comfort food, one she's resorting to in the midst of that family crisis in London at the beginning of the book. ('Other people drink to forget, I eat Brie'). Her reminiscences of Wilder (and some music she's writing, suggested by those memories) allow her to escape that crisis (it is a very low key, middle-class family crisis) and to turn over what's important to her in life and puzzle out a potential solution.

This book is, as I've said, delightful, full of thoughts and contrasts about art and life: Wilder is seen towards the end of his creative career, giving his view of the new up-and-coming generation of filmmakers, the Spielbergs and De Niros (punctilious in his middle-European manners, he always attaches "Mr" to their names - hence the title of the book).

Calista is, in 1977, at the start of hers: she will later become a composer of some note (though, as Coe makes clear, not a household name - her central critique of Fedora is that it's supposed to be about a film star, but how can there be a famous film star - or a famous composer - you haven't heard of?)

But as we reach the end of the book, Calista's nearing the end of what she has taken meaning from - bringing up her daughters, something which she gladly allowed to edge our her composing. Reflecting, then, on what she learned from "Mr Wilder" seems appropriate. How did he deal with losing the thing that had driven him, or perhaps, the means by which he'd expressed himself, influenced the world? ('the realisation that what we had to give, nobody really wanted any more.') That leads to an analysis of Fedora itself - not one of Wilder's greatest films, and reflecting some poor creative decisions, Calista nevertheless think she perceives what Wilder was trying to do and say.

I just loved Mr Wilder and Me, as you may have gathered. It's a little different from Coe's last couple of books, Number 11 and Middle England in not being about England and its society and politics. Yes there are a few barbs - Calista assumes that a washed up director she encounters in the BAFTA coffee bar 'came from a family who had plenty of money going back generations and were skilled at keeping it to themselves'. Or a tart 'England's not Europe'. Or, in more sinister vein, a former German acquaintance of Wilder's attempting to excuse his having had '...legitimate concerns about the influence of the Jews', that weasel phrase. But really this is I think a book about growing up, when young; about, perhaps, growing young again, later; about giving what you can and knowing when to stop - or possibly, not stopping and not caring if the world has moved on. It has its moments of tragedy and grief but is broadly a sunny and happy book - and intensely readable.

I'd strongly recommend it.

The first book I read by Jonathan Coe was the What a Carve Up with its consideration of the greed of the Thatcher era and recently I read Middle England where Coe considers Brexit and its effect. Both books were excellent with political insight and humour so I wondered whether I would enjoy Mr Wilder and Me as much, a book that doesn’t involve UK politics. Any doubts I had were soon dispelled, this is a brilliant novel mixing fact and fiction about the filming of Fedora with Hollywood director Billy Wilder and his partner Iz Diamond.
The book centres on Calista a composer of film scores who looks back over her life. Travelling in America she has a chance meeting with Billy Wilder although, at the time, she has little knowledge of the director and his films. Some of the filming for Billy Wilders next film ‘Fedora’ is in Greece so Calista is asked to work with the film crew as an interpreter. Calista stays with the film crew as they move on to Munich and then complete the filming in Paris.
Wilder is in the twilight of his career, no longer the star of the Hollywood Studios. The novel looks back over Billy Wilders life and the effect of the war and the holocaust on his life.
Having finished the novel I find myself fascinated by Billy Wilder and his films and wanting to watch Fedora (a film I haven’t seen) feeling I know so much about what happened during the filming process.
This is a brilliant book that seems quite gentle and unassuming yet is affecting and poignant.

When I started reading this book, I didn’t know who Mr Wilder was, however as I read more and realised the films mentioned were real, I began my research. From this moment, I was hooked as I wanted to find out more about his life. Although this is a fictional novel, it is based on the life of Bill Wilder and his successful career. Calista, the narrator, felt the same way too. She accidentally met Mr Wilder while travelling as a young woman in the late 1970s. Wilder planned to shoot his latest film, Fedora in Greece. Calista, half Greek and English, was employed to translate for him while on set. She researched and too became hooked on his past successes. The temporary role In Greece became more permanent as Calista became Iz Diamond’s (Wilder’s business partner) assistant.
The novel begins with Calista is looking back on her life as she faces her own personal challenges with her own daughters and ends with the resolution. In between, the story of a influential film director coming to terms with new ideas and what the public want from a film now. His idea of film is superseded by new directors, Steven Spielberg being one whose films are what the public what at that time.
So it is a coming to realise your age story, for all the characters, just at different stages in their lives. It is a lovely book, clever, moving, utterly engrossing and I found it just what I wanted to read, enjoyable from cover to cover.

I'm a big fan of Jonathan Coe and love his style of writing. This book did not disappoint. Predominantly set in the late 70's it is a nostalgic look at the end of the golden age of filmmaking. A time when it seems you could almost accidentally fund yourself on a film set. The story is a fictional one but based on real occurrences. How true to life the character depictions are I could not comment on, but they certainly feel very believable. I loved the relationship between a young Calista and the older filmmakers, particularly that which she has with Mr Diamond.
Thanks to #netgalley the author and publisher for this arc.