In this collection of short stories, Boyd explores the way that random events can have great effects on the lives of the protagonists. In the story that gives the book its title, Bethany, in her early twenties, vacillates over being a writer, an actress, a photographer or a singer, never settling on any one and drifting from one unsuitable partner to another and relying on her mother for finding her work and for accommodation. The other strongest story is more positive for Alec Dunbar, a minor film actor, who uses the skills and knowledge that he has acquired in his various fictional roles to get himself out of trouble when real life threatens.

Partly good and partly disappointing: ‘The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth’, the latest collection of short stories by William Boyd, is a bit of a curate’s egg. The shorter the stories, the more satisfying.
Organised in three parts, the first comprises seven short stories. If asked for my favourite from Part 1, I would say the first, ‘The Man Who Liked Kissing Women’. Ludo Abernathy is an art dealer who has foresworn affairs, his previous dalliances having finished three marriages. Now, he sticks to kissing women. Except when he can’t resist the temptation of making a killing on a Lucien Freud painting.
The title story, the longest in the anthology, makes up Part 2. It is more novella than short story, and I almost wish Boyd had developed it as such with a full plotline rather than letting Bethany Mellmoth drift from scene to scene. Bethany is a naïve twenty-something who drifts from boyfriend to boyfriend, dreaming of what she can do with her life but failing to make it happen. Each time it goes wrong, she gives up and moves back with her mother. It was a pleasant read but I’m unclear of Boyd’s central message – perhaps, the over-reliance of young drifters on parents rather than being truly independent – which meant I felt no urgency to read to the end. Of course I did. Bethany’s drifting started to annoy me; perhaps that was Boyd’s point?
Part 3 comprised one story, ‘The Vanishing Game: An Adventure’ which stopped abruptly. It starts off well: Alec Dunbar is an actor who keeps being called to auditions, mistakenly for Alexa Dunbar. His bad day improves when an actress who is waiting for an audition for the same film, offers him £1000 to deliver a package for her to Scotland. Dunbar’s road journey is peppered with references to the various films he has appeared in, and this is humorous. But the action becomes increasingly oddball, and the ending was disappointing. I prefer stories and novels that don’t tie up all the loose ends, but this one finished with too much remaining unexplained.
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I feel as though I am being a bit harsh with this rating but I have just scored it after reading the preposterous plot of 'The Vanishing Game'. I suppose it is a John Buchan homage and whilst I could swallow the plot devices in an early 20th Century setting it just seems silly in 2017. Perhaps I shpould reconsider. ( )

Bethany Mellmoth is drifter in life, she has short term affairs with unsuitable men and flirts with the idea of being an actress but has to get bailed out by her mother each time. Alec Dunbar is an unsuccessful actor inveigled into transporting something to the north of Scotland but which turns into a frightening adventure. Yves is an author who takes his revenge on a cruel reviewer. An art dealer is caught out by his numerous affairs. in a series of short and longer stories Boyd explores different aspects of life an love.

I am not a big fan of short stories but I am a fan of William Boyd so I interested to read this latest offering. In fact I was pleasantly surprised, some stories were excellent, some less so but the ones that were less successful were easily finished. The longer episodes about Bethany Mellmoth were actually better left as stories and not developed into a novel, in the same way that Bethany never developed her novel. She reminded me of so many girls who come from a relatively well-off background and so can afford to flirt with careers for years without ever settling down. I found the 'Boys Own Adventure' involving Alec Dunbar as silly as could be but I skipped through it happily. All in all, a mixed bag of tales but at their best they are superb. I wonder if this were a few musings that Boyd had made as potentially being good enough to develop into novels but enjoyed nevertheless. ( )

William Boyd is one of my favourite authors. Indeed, I consider that he is probably the greatest living British author, and I think I would happily read his shopping lists. The only other contender I ca think of is John le Carré, who certainly deserves to be thought of as so much more than simply a great writer of spy novels. Yet even with his extraordinary, and inimitable prose style, to my mind le Carré just loses out to the scope of Boyd’s imagination and his forensic capacity to lay bare a character’s psyche.

I had, therefore, been eagerly awaiting this book for several weeks, ever since I read in the literary press of its impending publication. I am not generally keen on short stories, and was a little disappointed to find that this was not a novel, but Boyd didn’t disappoint. Indeed, the title story is really more of a novella than a short story, and gives a marvellous portrayal of a slightly feckless but very likeable young woman as she struggles to cope with the strains of living in London on a low income, generated from a series of short term low profile jobs, struggling to find a direction in life and to sustain relationships. The meld of plausible characters and convincing plots is one of Boyd’s trademarks, and he brings it into play here. After one hundred pages I felt I had known Bethany Mellmoth all her life.

The other stories are just as strong, and Boyd is happy to experiment with the genre. One of them unfolds the story of a couple’s relationship in reverse, poignantly flagging up signposts to the reader of impending separation that the characters themselves were too self-absorbed to see. The others are just as strong – there are no weak stories or ‘fillers’ in this collection at all, and it stands as a worthy addition to an already top notch corpus. ( )