Summer Night, Winter Moon Heading to the Screen #book2movie

Summer Night, Winter Moon by Jane Huxley

Scrolling around this morning I discovered it was Stephen Fry’s birthday, at which point I wondered what the actor was up to. At 60, with over 150 credits to his name and a handful of projects in the hopper, Fry is always up to something. Best known for V for Vendetta, Gosford Park and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this project in preproduction caught my eye. Set in London and the Isle of Capri, I’m adding the 2014 mystery Summer Night, Winter Moon by Jane Huxley to my TBR pile. 

Antonia was last seen in Regent's Park walking her Jack Russell terrier. The remains of a female body have been recovered from Regent's Canal, and both her husband and his best friend are suspects in what increasingly appears to be a murder. The fast-moving story travels backwards in time. Exploration of the mystery of Antonia's fate follows twists and turns as hair-raising as the roads on the mountainous isle of Capri. Jane Huxley, detective of the human psyche, ushers readers to the astonishing ending, proving along the way that the deepest mystery of all is that of the soul torn between desire and loyalty. Jane Huxley once again shines a light on what one reviewer of her previous work called "the pampered indolence of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned". She keeps up a brisk pace, both in the elegant prose and the suspense instilled from the opening pages, affording readers a voyeuristic thrill along with keen psychological insight.

Fry plays Rufus in the adaptation, a supporting character, which is often the case with Fry’s career. The big man with the large personality is a bestie of Emma Thompson who calls him “90 percent gay and 10 percent other.’’

Stephen Fry: On Depression

The reality of that big personality is Fry has a serious mood disorder. With manic depression as his personal demon, his very big ups can also be followed by some very dark downs. So deeply serious that Fry attempted suicide back in 2012. I think what he has to say on the subject is important.

“I am the victim of my own moods, more than most people are perhaps, in as much as I have a condition which requires me to take medication so that I don't get either too hyper or too depressed to the point of suicide. I would go as far as to tell you that I attempted it last year, so I'm not always happy - this is the first time I've said this in public, but I might as well. I'm president of Mind, and the whole point in my role, as I see it, is not to be shy and forthcoming about the morbidity and genuine nature of the likelihood of death amongst people with certain mood disorders. It was a close run thing. I took a huge number of pills and a huge [amount] of vodka and the mixture of them made my body convulse so much that I broke four ribs, but I was still unconscious. And, fortunately, the producer I was filming with at the time came into the hotel room and I was found in a sort of unconscious state and taken back to England and looked after. There is no 'why', it's not the right question. There's no reason. If there were a reason for it, you could reason someone out of it, and you could tell them why they shouldn't take their own life.

Sincere best wishes to Fry to have a happy birthday. And a reminder to those of you battling your own demons, to reach out for help. Here in the US, you can reach someone to talk to at the National Suicide Prevention hotline at  1-800-273-8255.

Connecting with British Isles Friday