The story starts out with a young man meeting his uncle who was a hero in WWII. I have to admit to wondering how this fitted with the story but it turns out that the young man was the artist who drew the super hero comic that would eventually be turned into a motion picture masterpiece many years later. The book has the comics replicated it it but I listened to the BBC adaptation for Book at Bedtime and so missed out on this.

Each chapter then introduces another character pulled into the making of the motion picture and slowly, very slowly, the film is made. This is not a story with big ups and downs, more gentle slides and so when you get to the end, you wonder what has happened if anything.

You can’t fault the level of detail about the making of a picture, as they say – write about what you know and Hanks has done this.

I enjoyed the story coming full circle with the young man, now an old man, ending up back at the house where he met his uncle the war hero but my vision of Hollywood is a lot tougher than this book. I know Hanks would know more about it than me. I might have been swayed by LA Confidential, A Star is Born and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? along with the stories of Harvey Weinstein and others whereas this story is relatively gentle.

This book was perhaps the perfect antidote to Children of Paradise by Camilla Gudrova.