Customer Reviews

Gilding Lily

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great book to curl up with and devour. It's so nice to start a novel and know within the first few pages you're going to love the read. It never let me down. Aside from being well-written and just plain fun, GUILDING LILY offers a delicious glimpse into New York high society. Yet, even though most of us don't live lives anything like Lily's, we can still identify with her struggles for acceptance from others and ultimately herself.

Thank goodness I got this as gift, because even $5 is a ripoff for this piece of retrograde trash. I wanted to throw in the towel at page 17, but I kept going because I relished the thought of writing this review.

This book sucks. DO NOT BUY. Here's why:

1) Why is Lily such a wimp? Everything her worthless baby daddy does is OK, apparently, because she's in wuv, twue wuv, with him. But why? There is no convincing back narrative for her love for Robert, just a lot of twaddle about her physical attraction and "she felt she could trust him" when she first met him. WTF? There is nothing in the book to contradict the reader's conclusion that Robert is a selfish, lazy rich boy and that Robert and Lily got married too quickly. He has no ambition, which Lily states on more than one occasion that her partner should have. Way to stick to your principles, lady. And everything the mother in law perpetrates, Lily just shuts up and takes because she secretly likes the trappings of the Park Avenue Princess life. And Lily's own mother is breathtakingly sexist, which only perturbs Lily slightly. And it's never explained why Lily liked her life as a journalist, and the conflict between staying home and continuing to work is never examined with the rigor that a real working mother would bring to it. Basically, Lily is an unlikeable cipher, spineless and venal, without an original thought of her own. Which leads to #2...

2) The poor proofreader at the publishing house should be fired, unfortunately. Boncompagni uses "venal" in one instance where she means "evil" or similar, and uses "discrete" where she should use "discreet." And those are just two instances I can think of without trying real hard. Grammar and usage. Please pay attention to it.

3) Boncompagni is not a good enough writer to convey the profundity of being responsible for a small human being. Instead, the repeated descriptions of how awesome breastfeeding is just come off as grotesque fetishization of mommyhood. I guess this fetishization substitutes for a real examination of the conflict between wanting to work (which Lily doesn't want, anyway) and wanting to raise children. Ugh, so cheesy, because Bomcompagni doesn't have the words to make motherhood sing. The use of typical adjectives when describing the baby and Lily's love for him and using phrases like "he [the baby] was her world now" just will make you puke. I can name five mommybloggers who are more lyrical on a daily basis.

4) Besides Lily, almost every other character in the book is unlikeable. Except possibly for Allison. Why should anyone care what happens to a bunch of starving, mean, predatory twits on the Upper East Side? Anna Wintour has been pimping these kinds of people for years in Vogue, and I still don't care what moisturizer they use or how much they liked Alber Elbaz's last collection. This whole book presupposes that one cares about the UES subspecies already. Actual classic American literature set in the Gilded Age never supposed the reader would be immediately sympathetic to its subjects.

Look, if you want to read a story of a woman ruining her "prospects," just go straight to the source and read House of Mirth or Sister Carrie.

I thoroughly enjoyed Gilding Lily. Tatiana Boncompagni really knows the world about which she writes. She captures the foibles of young Manhattan socialites brilliantly. This book was absolutely impossible for me to put down. I read it in two sittings. The characters felt very real and the story moves at a brisk clip. If you enjoy intelligent books about the world of Manhattan high society, this one is for you.

Lily comes from a middle-class Tennessee upbringing and tries to breach the inner sanctum of the New York socialites when she marries a weak but wealthy heir to a gardening fortune. The story chronicals the first year of Lily's marriage and motherhood and delves into the shallow and outrageous antics of the super wealthy and their social climbing machinations. It is not until the end that Lily sees the light and comes full circle to realize that Manhattan's so-called elite are shallow snobs with nothing to offer. The book is a fun read but the characters were so over the top that the book is unbelievable. However, I enjoyed the book as a light and quick read.

I throughly enjoyed reading "Gilding Lily". The character development in this "first novel" is excellent; I felt as though I knew the characters from the beginning of the novel. The pace is even and just fast enough to keep the reader engaged. Without car chases or one character that serves as a "patsy" this story is very often exciting and funny. The "inner life" of the main character reflects so many of the worries that women, regardless of status, concern themselves with daily that it will appeal to anyone who's ever wondered "what IS he thinking"??

I absolutely adored this book. When I got my first look at the cover, I was a little unsure (yes, I am one of THOSE people - I have been known to occasionally base my first impression of a book by its cover). However, in this case, I am glad that I took the time to read the first few sentences of the chapter, because as soon as I did, I was hooked.

Gilding Lily, by first time author, Tatiana Boncompagni has all of the elements needed to make it a compulsive read. The storyline is set in the world of the ridiculously rich - and is populated by its own particular brand of characters, which you will (mostly) love to hate. There are also deliciously written scenes of over-indulgence, sweet romantic moments and lots of gossip and cattiness!!!

Our main character Lily, who was not born into a world of privilege, but does aspire to it, marries the love of her life and vows to become `one of them' - except that she never quite succeeds. Indeed, saddled with a mother in law who despises her, a husband who lives on his trust fund and has never quite understood that he needs to let go of the apron strings, a brand new baby (not to mention the baby fat and the baby vomit) as well as a bunch of socialites who laugh at her behind her back, Lily feels lost and lonely and hatches a plan to "re-invent" herself and to prove, once and for all, that she is worthy of this high-society life. Just as Lily is finally starting to feel appreciated and accepted, she will come face to face with Emily who will do absolutely anything to get into the same world Lily is now happily living in. I found the character of Emily to be a great addition to the storyline. She is the trigger that will help Lily take a good look at herself and her priorities - she acts as a mirror for Lily and will be a big part of Lily's growing up (finally!) process and will help her discover what is truly important for her.

What makes this book so interesting, to me, is that none of the characters (with the possible exception of baby Will) are particularly likeable and this includes Lily. The author has chosen to create Lily with a very interesting mixture of good and bad which I found absolutely riveting. You can feel Lily's inner-struggle, on one hand despising the world she is in, but at the same time, desperately craving to be part of it. At times, she can be almost as catty and horrible as her circle of "Restylane-plumped, laser-resurfaced friends" while simultaneously, proving herself to be a wonderful mother, friend and loving wife. Lily is definitely a dichotomy and I kept reading avidly to find out exactly where Lily would land. This character was truly well constructed and fleshed out and set the tone for the entire storyline.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between Lily and her husband, Robert. At times, I was not sure which of the two I wanted to smack more - and I found myself shouting at both of them to grow up, but this just added to my pleasure in reading this book.

The writing style flows gracefully and there is not one word out of place. Absolutely charming, authentic and extremely difficult to put them....un petit péché mignon!!!

I really wanted to like this novel. I initially hesitated to buy it for fear that it would be vacuous. My problem with the novel wasn't so much that, it was that Lily, the main character, was hard to swallow. It's been a long time since I have read of someone so manipulable and weak. I could not stand her. She caved in the the most insignificant pressures of life and changed who she was to suit others. She let her husband, his mother, her acquaintances and their friends invade her life and she never fought back. By the time she decided to grow a backbone some 200 plus pages into the book, I had completely tired of her and could not care less how her story turned out. I almost put this novel down many times. I gave it 3 stars for one reason alone - the quality of writing was not bad even if the characters were.

Lily Grace moves from Nashville to New York with plans of taking Manhattan by storm. She becomes very popular amidst the elite social class and meets educated wealthy charmer Robert Bartholomew. They marry.

When Lily becomes pregnant, Robert loses interest in her as she gains weight and is no longer the it "Girl of the moment". He quits his job as a lawyer and begins spending time with his socialite mother who never wanted the southern belle as her daughter-in-law. Lily begins writing lifestyle articles that allows her reentrance into the high society world her pregnancy kicked her from, but she is treated with distain led by Robert's mother.

Using hyperbole as an amusing saber, Tatiana Boncompagni provides a fascinating look at what people will accept in order to belong to a group that treats "outsiders" as pet rocks. Lily holds the tale together with her need to be part of the upper crust elitist crowd whose motto ought to be "Let them eat cake off our Persian rugs". Humorous yet somewhat sad as the human need to belong supersedes self actualization even when the members disdain you as inferior. This is a well written insightful contemporary tale in which readers will like the desperate Lily and root for her to find the grace of telling her spouse, her in-laws and the wealthy in crowd to pound rocks although at the same time the audience knows her inclination is in the opposite direction.

Harriet Klausner

I really wanted to like this book, since I enjoy the light hearted chick lit category usually, but this character is so spineless that every other page infuriates me. I absolutely do not see what she sees in her husband - even at the start of their courtship he snubs her twice before deigning to call her. His mother is extraordinarily rude to her and not only does she put up with it, she puts up with her husband telling her she SHOULD put up with it. The women she wants to be friends with insult her to her face, calling her fat and unimportant, and she just smiles and takes it, hoping one day they'll like her. She is made to thank her in laws every time they feed her dinner, unlike their son who is "family." They buy him clothes but make her pay for hers - and he yells at her for buying some clothes of her own when he just got a whole new (mommy paid) wardrobe and a six figure car. As soon as he snaps at her to get a job she jumps and does it. As soon as he tells her to sell her clothes if she is still to big post partum to wear them, she does. If he told her to go work the street corner while he sat around playing squash she would probably do that too.
SPOILER!!
SPOILER!! DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING.
And in the end, after all the insults, after taking everyone's side but hers, after him being lazy and unemployed for months and unsupportive, she just takes him back. After he leaves her! After screaming at her for embarrassing him by being attacked by a work collegue! She puts up a half page fight, and then rolls right over and lets him voice a pretty little apology and come back. AAARGH! The only way this book could have been saved was if she had actually learned something at the end and grown a spine, but apparently it is romantic to be treated like a used door mat. Infuriating. So not only do I hate her husband, I end the book thinking she's really getting what she deserves with him.

This book was one that I chose because I liked the dress on the cover. I was surprised by how fast it was to read and that I was intrigued by the story.