An Absolute Scandal
Money makes a powerful world - until it all comes crashing down
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4.5 • 36 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
A searing portrait of wealthy living, scandal and secrets...
'Buy on a Friday, get home, turn off the phone and emerge on Monday replete with a tale well told. Guilty pleasures? We certainly all have them and this is better than most' - Daily Express
There's nothing like the contentment and security that money can bring. That's how it is for Lucinda, Elizabeth and Flora, living the risk-free dream in the glittering eighties. Houses, holidays, happiness - everything is there for the taking.
The financial slide comes crashing into their lives with a vengeance, and everything they've built up so carefully dissolves into a pool of hopelessness, taking self-respect and relationships with it.
Now, the secrets will out and within a year, someone will be dead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Britain's bestselling Vincenzi (Sheer Abandon, etc.) sets this doggedly optimistic epic at the sunset of Thatcherism, and the bleak economic landscape proves fertile territory for a saga of families whose futures and fortunes become entwined in a court battle with the prestigious London insurer, Lloyds. There's Elizabeth, wife and mother of three with a "Very Big Job" in advertising; her charming husband, Simon, a banker with an eye for the ladies; posh Lucinda, who falls for working-class Blue and then risks everything to save her ex's fortune; Debbie's frustrated by her insensitive husband, Richard, afraid of her formidable mother-in-law and devoted to her three kids; and reporter Joel, who helps bring a Lloyds scandal to light and falls in love with one of its victims. Vincenzi deftly imbues the "Greed Decade" with all the twisty turns of an overheated soap couples trapped by boredom, wives tortured by infidelity, singles hamstrung by convention, children buffeted by circumstance. The general stiff-upper-lipped attitude may sound tinny to American ears (even the Yankees sound like Brits-in-training), but this chickensian drama delivers all the goods required for a sizzling summer read.
Customer Reviews
A good yarn but Penny's obsession with class grates
I love Penny Vincenzi books (God rest her soul), but her obsession with class is annoying. She makes digs at those regarded as 'lower class' through her characters - but it's obvious that it's her opinion too. All her books have a few token working class people thrown in but you get a bit sick of reading about people who are so privileged. Even in this book where the central point is people losing money, nobody actually has to struggle - they still eat out and enjoy themselves. But I've given it 5 stars because it is a good read and well written. I have read all her books and they are great - perhaps just not the best to read when you're struggling to pay your rent or put food on the table. The have's and the have not's eh? This life is unfair and Penny's book shows you just how unfair it all actually is.