Notting Hell: A Novel [Hardcover]

Rachel Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2007

Meet Mimi (Fleming at school/surgery/the butcher's, Mimi Malone at work/dinner parties with attractive men!) Mimi may 'have it all', she has the house, the children, the part-time vanity job, the skinny jeans, and the feng shui guru, but life chez Fleming it's not as cushy as she'd like (husband Ralph prefers the trout stream in Wiltshire to the fast lane of W11). And when Mimi meets Si, the new billionaire on the block, at a sushi party, she soon faces a choice of keeping up, or keeping it real...Then there's her best friend Clare, neatfreak garden designer, deep in bio-panic about her childlessness with eco-architect husband, Gideon.Clare monitors all illicit activity in the private West London compound - from light adultery to heavy building work - and she is watching Mimi as spring turns to summer, and summer to winter...A wicked comedy of manners filleting life on a "Notting Hill" communal garden, where lucky residents fall into one of only two social-economic groups: the haves - and the have-yachts...So, take your GBP3m key (it costs that much because if you lose it, you basically have to buy another house on the communal garden to replace it) and enter Lonsdale Gardens, meet the rest of the rich neighbours and see what really goes on behind that famous garden gate.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This veddy droll through-the-keyhole debut from British columnist Johnson is drenched in the mores and manners of London's West Village equivalent—plus or minus a few trustafarians and maybe a few titles. Married to an "ecotect" and speeding childlessly toward middle age, Clare is a dilettante who dabbles in feng shui gardening when she isn't keeping an ovulation diary and minding everyone else's business on the back garden shared by her square block. Her frenemy, Mimi, is a 37-year-old freelance journalist who is married to Ralph (a freelance energy consultant and pundit) and Mummy to three posh kids and a dog. As the two alternate first-person chapters, Clare spots a scantily clad neighbor's wife sneaking out of the wrong house in the predawn darkness, while Mimi contemplates relieving her malignant ennui by hopping into bed with their new billionaire bachelor neighbor, Si Kasparian. ("Money is terribly sexy," she notes.) What follows are pages of brand- and name-dropping, boring hesitations and recriminations, untrustworthy billionaire behavior and Clare discovering her husband has taken an opposing side on a contentious garage renovation. Lacking the emotional depth of Anna Maxted and the strategic bling-command of Jackie Collins, this semisatire gets lost somewhere in between. (Apr.)
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Review

"Notting Hell is witty, sharp, outrageous, and cringingly real. I was riveted!"-- Sophie Kinsella, author of Confessions of a Shopaholic and The Undomestic Goddess

"A delicious dip into the absurdly competitive world of a brand-new, rather terrifying British tribe -- the Notting Hill nouveau riche."-- Plum Sykes, author of Bergdorf Blondes and The Debutante Divorcée

"Gripping . . . a pacy mix of lifestyle envy, sexual intrigue, and good, old-fashioned gossip. A real page-turner that will appeal to those far from Notting Hill itself."-- Easy Living (UK)

"Deliciously witty, wickedly funny, and surprisingly touching. She captures the zeitgeist of a society obsessed with having it all with a heady combination of hilarity and heart. The perfect feel-good read."-- Santa Montefiore, author of Last Voyage of the Valentina and The Gypsy Madonna

"Acerbic and well observed . . . with her magpie eye for local detail and a couple of good cracking jokes per page, Notting Hell is snappy, witty, definitely clever, and hugely readable."-- Nicholas Coleridge, The Spectator (UK)

"A tale of the rich behaving badly in one of London's most exclusive enclaves. Notting Hell is delicious fun."-- Karen Quinn, author of The Ivy Chronicles and Wife in the Fast Lane --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1ST edition (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416531769
• ISBN-13: 978-1416531760
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,168,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars that's right, 5 stars for a light read, April 16, 2007

By 

lisatheratgirl "lisatheratgirl" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Notting Hell: A Novel (Hardcover)

The other person who reviewed this is right, it is a women's book. I gave it 5 stars because I totally enjoyed it from beginning to end, surprising even myself. I remarked to someone at the office that if this had taken place on New York's upper east side (again!) I would probably have hated it. But it was funny. Mimi and Clare are very distinguishable, one frantically trying to keep up with the Joneses, with her ramshackle family and not caring aristocratic husband Ralph (that's Rafe, Americans); the other taking herself totally seriously as a windowbox consultant and devotee of feng shui. Mimi is assigned to write an article on adultery, which is going on all around her, and most of it not in a conventional sense. You have the perfect French couple, the seemingly boorish American couple, the vegans, the dog lovers, the child lovers. Unlike the awful Elements of Style or The Right Address, I liked these people with all their faults and pretensions. They weren't perfect. They got themselves into embarrassing situations. In general, they weren't mean (check Joan and Wendy in The Right Address, for instance). I didn't see this as a serious piece of literature, but it wasn't supposed to be. As a piece of gentle satire from the author's own background, it works. I really liked it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, April 11, 2007

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Notting Hell: A Novel (Hardcover)

I laughed aloud several times in the first 50 pages or so, as Rachel Johnson hilariously and entertainingly ticks off one after another of the characteristics and life-styles of a certain type of residents who live in her (and my) neighbourhood around a Notting Hill garden square; and I wondered how she could possibly keep this up over 328 pages - and of course she couldn't. Later on, the descriptions, page after page, of chichi foods and food stores, chichi dresses and dress shops, chichi interiors and chichi-to-be-but-for-the-moment-stroppy kids eventually become wearying; and the adulteries around the garden square are novelettish.

It's all seen through feminine eyes: the chapters alternate between the first person narratives of two women, friends and competitors: the very rich but childless Clare, obsessively trying to thwart a mega-rich American banker building an extension of his mansion into the garden, and the somewhat less rich mother-of-three Mimi; but their voices are indistinguishable one from another. There is one other hilarious scene - the annual Garden Sports and Summer Party, and I do like the unexpected ending.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 200 Pages too long, I'm afraid., February 11, 2010

By 

danaful (North Branford, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notting Hell: A Novel (Paperback)

I almost never review books because everyone gets bent out of shape when you say you didn't enjoy something that people seem to like, but this book begs for the exception, and mostly because the phrase "yummy mummy" is so loathesome that I'd like to demand it be stricken from the public lexxicon. Additionally, if you cut out the inane brand names, the unlikeable lead female characters and the aren't-we-preciousness of where they live, what you have left is a magazine article, which is really what this should be.