A Much Married Man
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A stunning new blockbuster from the author of GODCHILDREN.
An Englishman's home is his castle. Or at least it should be. But as Anthony Anscombe surveys Winchford Priory, his beautiful Elizabethan house in Oxfordshire, lurking in the village are more than one or two reminders of a life well-lived.
His first wife was the hauntingly beautiful girl he married in an impulsive rush of hedonism. Amanda was never going to live up to her role as the wife of a country squire, so why does she still cast such a long shadow in Anthony's life?
Sandra, the second wife, came to Anthony's rescue. Sturdy, dependable and relentlessly practical, Sandra had plans to turn the Priory into a proper family home, until that summer when it all went horribly wrong...
And then there's Dita, a force of nature. Effortlessly glamorous and achingly wealthy, Dita storms through Anthony's life, organising and rearranging - particularly when it comes to previous Mrs Anscombes and their children.
With the entire cast of his life roosting in the village, it's no wonder Anthony doesn't have a minute's peace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Britain's moneyed upper crust comes in for a slapstick razzing in this class-skewering 10th book (after novels Godchildren and Streetsmart) by Cond Nast U.K. managing director Coleridge. The titular much-married man is Anthony Anscombe, the thoroughly decent but na vely innocent scion of a private English merchant bank family, who also happens to be a country squire responsible for the well-being of a picturesque village and 2,000 acres of "magical" land to which his family has held title for 370 years. The eccentric locals love Anthony, and Anthony loves haplessly: over four decades, he marries three unsuitable women, sires five children and shepherds five stepchildren through turbulent upbringings. Aside from his bank duties, which provide ample fodder for Coleridge's wry satire, Anthony is called upon to undertake a load of unpleasant chores, such as confronting his philandering father-in-law at the latter's "floating lovenest" and defending his rapist stepson, Morad. Throughout, Anthony remains the epitome of a gentleman, unfailingly patient with the demanding women in his life (the first a diva waif, the second a priggish homebody and the third a monstrous money-grubber). This well-informed comedy of stiff-upper-lip manners reads, charmingly, as if sprung from a writerly union between Iris Murdoch at the high end and Harold Robbins at the low.
