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For fans of Muriel Spark, a dazzling novel about a young woman thrust into in the opulent world of 1940s Hollywood, where dirty dealings, undercover agents and off-camera romances abound

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For fans of Muriel Spark, a dazzling novel about a young woman thrust into in the opulent world of 1940s Hollywood, where dirty dealings, undercover agents and off-camera romances abound

It is September 1940 and Evelyn Murdoch, a translator from the Postal Censorship department, is uprooted from her home in wartime Woking and transferred to Hollywood. She is to assist a mysterious British agent in his attempts to outwit the Los Angeles German delegation and boost the British propaganda war effort.

The unhappy young widow is supplied with a new Californian wardrobe, a Bel Air bungalow and her own desk in the writers´ block of Miracle Studios.

At first bewildered by the glamorous excesses of this strange new world, she is gradually seduced by the sunlight, orange groves and clever, fast-talking men. But, just as she begins to blossom, her new technicolor ending threatens to slip from her grasp.

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Great fun ... As a heroine, [Evelyn] is a triumph. Orphaned and severed from her roots, she is the worthy heiress of Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp and, particularly, Flora Poste, in her steeliness, her steady eye and her use and appreciation of wit ... [Happy Little Bluebirds] is a bit of a romp, full of sharp one-liners and acerbic apercus, the kind of novel that makes you want to read paragraphs out to strangers, to share the joy Financial Times

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Levene, Louise
Louise Levene is the author of A Vision of Loveliness, a BBC Book at Bedtime, which was also longlisted for the Desmond Elliott first novel prize, Ghastly Business and The Following Girls. She was the dance critic for the Sunday Telegraph for sixteen years and before that a dance writer on the Independent, but now works for the Financial Times. She has also been an advertising copywriter, a window dresser, a radio presenter, an office cleaner, a crossword editor, a university tutor, a college professor and a saleslady. She lives in London with her husband, their two children and Basher.

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