Real

by Stephanie Merritt

Sally McGinley, 29, is a playwright who has watched her university friends achieve success in film and theatre while her career is diminishing. Greg Burns, 44, is an actor on the slide - television success in a vet drama six years ago is a distant memory, and his twelve-year relationship with Caroline and his ten-year-old daughter has hit hard and frustrating times. When Sally is commissioned to write a new play for top director Freddie Zamora in the West End and Greg is cast as the male lead, both of them seize the opportunity to enliven their professional lives. Greg moves to London and they begin an affair which at first seems just the kind of reckless, sexual adventure they'd craved; until, disbelievingly, Sally announces she is pregnant and they are both forced to make decisions that catapult them into a recognition of just what real life entails.

Genres: Contemporary

386 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

(Also writes under the pseudonym S.J. Parris)

Stephanie Merritt (born 1974 in Surrey) to Jim and Rita Merritt is a critic and feature writer for various publications including The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, Zembla and Die Welt. She has also been Deputy Literary Editor and a staff writer at The Observer.

Merritt graduated in English from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1996. Prior to this, she attended Godalming College in Surrey.

She is the author of two novels, Gaveston (Faber & Faber) which won a Betty Trask Award of £4,000 from the Society of Authors in 2002 [2:], and Real (2005), for which she is currently writing a screenplay. She has also written a memoir, The Devil Within, published by Vermilion is 2008, which discusses her experiences living with depression.

Meritt has appeared regularly as a critic and panellist on BBC Radio 4 and BBC7, has been a judge for the BBC and Channel 4 new comedy awards as well as the Perrier Award, and appeared as interviewer and author at various literary festivals, as well as the National Theatre and the English National Opera.