SCRUPLES [Import] [Hardcover]

JUDITH KRANTZ (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 516 pages
• Publisher: INNER CIRCLE BOOKS LTD; New Ed edition (1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1850180199
• ISBN-13: 978-1850180197
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Original Krantz, still the best (with an update), December 26, 1997

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scruples (Mass Market Paperback)

Judith Krantz is not a writer you read for intellectual stimulation or spiritual enlightenment. But she is still one of the most entertaining mass-market novelists around, especially for women. All of her books feature strong, attractive (on the inside as well as the outside) yet believable women; and the plots are the stuff of modern age fairy tales. Scruples is her first novel, the one that put her on the map and was a smash hit in the late '70s. The heroine, Billy Winthrop Ikehorn (two other surnames follow eventually), may be the least likeable of all her heroines, yet is the most believable perhaps because she is flawed. The plot and settings feel slightly dated, but don't really distract from the pure mindless enjoyment of a "smashing read". One of the big attractions of the Krantz novels are the well-researched and absorbing "inside details" of the settings - of the Beverly Hills retail world, the movie industry and people of a certain class in Paris in the case of Scruples. If you read this book and like it, you'll want to grab all her books; if you hate it, don't bother with any others. I have been buying every single one of her books since Scruples up to her latest, Spring Collection, and hope she continues. They are great for reading in bed or in a hot tub.

(Update added in October 2011)

I just happened to run across this review that I wrote way back in 1997. I recently downloaded the Kindle version in a fit of nostalgia, and re-read it for the first time in at least 10 years. I still enjoyed it, but it does seem a lot more dated now. It is very much a product of its time, the mid to late 1970s (the original publication date is 1978). If you can read it as a work detailing a particular time and place in the past (most of the action is set in and around Beverly Hills, though there are significant portions set in Paris and New York) it almost can be regarded as a work of period fiction. As with any work that was written in the past, you cannot really judget it by current day standards - 1978 looks and sounds a lot more contemporary than say, Jane Austen's time or F. Scott Fitzgerald's time, but it certain is not 2011. (One obvious example is the free and easy attitude towards multiple partner, condomless sex, in an era before AIDS. It's rather quaint and sad in retrospect, and very '70s.) As a look back to the late 1970s and times that preceeded it, it's quite interesting. I am not comparing Judith Krantz to those two celebrated authors as a literary talent by any means, but she was always a highly entertaining chronicler of a very narrow segment of her times in an admittedly shallow, superficial way.

(I am taking off one star mainly because the Kindle edition is just full of odd spellings and even whole missing parts. Did no one proofread the digitized version and compare it with the original? Shame on you, Random House.)

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Okay, so it isn't Shakespear, July 1, 2003

By 

alexandra ash (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scruples (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't usually read romance novels - they're all patently predictable and unbelievable and, in most cases, horribly written. My girlfriend read Scruples during the summer that we were both 15, and she made me read it, which I did in one long, hot day, stretched out in a hammock in my backyard. The writing is quite intelligent, humorous, touching, and diverse - Judith Krantz, I quickly learned, likes to educate the reader at odd, unsuspected moments. Odd little tidbits - such as South Carolina produces more fashion models than any other state, and that panties from Juel Park go for $200.00 a paid (or did in 1976). The sex was rather yummy, and kind of ahead of its time (read the glory hole sequence). Yeah, I read it, and yeah, I enjoyed it, and yeah, I read her other books as well. I must admit, this one was my favorite. I still have a copy, and i still re-read it from time to time. Hey, sometimes you just have to appreciate the classics.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Scruples, September 15, 2011

By 

Kcap131 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scruples (Kindle Edition)

I was very excited to finally find Judith Krantz novels on Kindle & I gladly paid the publisher's price for a book that is over 30 years old. However, The amount of transcription errors was HUGE!,,, words misspelled, words and paragraphs missing. Come on, if you are going to charge that much for it, the LEAST the publisher could do is proofread it!

Judith Krantz novels are pure, unadulterated slutty fun. The poor transcription takes away frm that fun.