Veronica's group of friends are well-to-do professionals, intent on keeping up a charade of well-being and success. On the surface everything is fine: Julian and Veronica get married; Teddy tells good jokes; Gloria chases men. Trouble brews, however, when the sinister Katherine Vermont becomes obsessed with the deceitful activities of her ex-lover, Julian. The tragedy that finally erupts shows the high price that can be paid for emotional dishonesty -- to oneself as well as to others.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
London writer Brookfield's second comedy of manners (after Alice Alone ) introduces a vexatious group of people too self-absorbed to recognize the emotional needs of their closest friends. Playboy Julian Blake weds Veronica Kembleton, but his rugby teammates-- bachelors Teddy, George and Peter-- rightly predict his dissatisfaction with marriage. Within a year, Julian is involved in an affair with a woman to whom he confesses details of a meaningless homosexual fling he'd had with Teddy. Little does Julian suspect that this relationship was all but casual to depressed, alcoholic Teddy--nor that his outwardly flawless ex-girlfriend Katherine has been spying on him and is plotting revenge. Selfish Julian, dutiful Veronica, lovesick Teddy and mentally unstable Katherine embody only one-dimensional roles in this uninventive soap opera. A third-person narrator offers redundant asides warning of the dangers implicit in even the most comfortable existences, while Julian et al., thanks to their remarkable insensitivity, manage to weather the tragedies that befall them and get back to business-as-usual. Brookfield's astringent prose often falls as flat as the characters whose lives she dissects.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This novel examines the manners and mores of a bright young set of Londoners, working hard at their careers and even harder at their social lives. It begins with the wedding of Julian and Veronica and ends with the funerals of two of Julian's former close friends who have, quite coincidentally, jumped from high windows. In between, several sharply etched characters become more themselves: more pragmatic, determined, gullible, vulnerable, self-destructive, realistic, serious. Peter Sidcup, most perceptive of them, tries to assess blame for the tragedy but cannot. "The strands of events and emotions . . . were too numerous to unravel . . . it was like some massive spider's web that had them all in its clutches." At novel's end, we leave Peter, on a bright spring day in church, arriving at the comforting conviction that "everyone gets what they deserve in the end." One hopes so. An insightful, engaging second novel by the author of Alice Alone (LJ 10/1/89) . Highly recommended.
- Patricia Y. Morton, State Lib. of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Patricia Y. Morton, State Lib. of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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