Advertisement
Home Tech & Science Home entertainment

‘An Absolute Scandal’ by Penny Vincenzi

(Headline, $37.99)It’s been a while since I’ve picked up a Penny Vincenzi. This is her thirteenth novel and I must have read three or four a while back but then lost the taste for them. Now I have it back and, let me tell you, An Absolute Scandal is quite delicious.

Advertisement

The book is set in London in the last days of the glittering `80s and follows the fortunes, somewhat dwindling, of the smart (or not-so-smart) set who became Lloyd’s “Names”. It was quite a status symbol to be invited to be a Name. My understanding is that you agreed to back the insurance part of the famous bank’s business by putting up, say, your London home and country house by way of a deposit, and for your trouble you were paid out most handsomely for many years.

But when the insurance industry went into crisis at the end of the 1980s, the scales tipped and the Names had to cough up money instead. Lots of it.

For the charming Simon Beaumont, it means ta-ra to the yacht and the house in the country – and could it be off to the meatworks with daughter Tilly’s pony? More importantly, will his career-superwoman wife Elizabeth stick with him?

For Nigel Cowper and his Sloane Ranger wife Lucinda, it means financial disaster. But that’s not the worst of it, for Nigel anyway.

Advertisement

Flora Fielding, on the other hand, faces losing the Welsh farm that has been in her late husband’s family for generations. Whatever will she do without the meadow to stroll through to stare at the stars? And who will pay her grandchildren’s private school fees? Her son Richard (a real pill, if you ask me) is already having problems with wife Debbie and this will surely not help matters.

I don’t know how Penny Vincenzi writes books 750 pages long but very few of those pages were not worth turning. If you’re looking for a weekend or holiday blockbuster, this is it.

Related stories


Get The Australian Woman’s Weekly NZ home delivered!  

Subscribe and save up to 38% on a magazine subscription.

Advertisement
Advertisement