Hollywood starlet Emma Fine drops out of sight after her lover Ted Weaver is found dead, floating in her swimming pool. Also missing is Ted’s wife, Bridget, who holds more than a passing resemblance to Emma. Ten years later, Bruce Dermott, a tabloid reporter with Pulitzer Prize pretensions, chances upon Emma Fine on a busy street. Determined to expose Emma to a celebrity-crazed public, Bruce sees in the mysterious woman his ticket to the journalistic big leagues.In seeking to disentangle the myth of the vanished celebrity Bruce uncovers the trails of several lives, each trying to impose their own meaning on Emma’s story in a play of illusions, trickery and body doubles. Bruce must try to make sense of the layers of deception and depravity lurking behind a façade of glamour. But he is also forced to take a hard look at his own life by the sudden arrival of his troubled teenaged son and the ex-wife he still loves.Michelle Berry’s cool and sparkling style belies a churning complexity of motive, in a novel written with deadpan humour and narrative verve. At times evoking Sunset Boulevard in theme and mood, Blur draws us into the warped Hollywood culture of fame, obsession, narcissism and self-destructiveness, where someone will go to desperate lengths to be a star -- or just look like one.
