Customer Reviews

Windfall: A Novel

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Cassie Fallon though a non-practicing medical doctor is an ordinary housewife with two small kids and wife to Dr, Edward Fallon; when she learns that she has inherited half a million pounds from her godmother Leanora who lived in Paris. Reluctant to spend any part of this fortune, she and her husband start to ponder why Leanora would have left such a large amount of money or any at all for that matter, when they were made to believe that she had died penniless. The solictor has no idea and encourages them to stop worrying and take the money.

The Fallons start to spend the first set of Cassie's inheritance on refurbishing Edward's medical facilities which ajoin the house and then they redo their home. Admidst all these renovations Cassie takes a good look at herself and decides that she needs a makeover of sorts. She flies to London where she purchases a new brand car, much to Edward's distaste, and with her desire to restart her medical pratice, Cassie's sets her sights on half-baked and far-fetched plans, letting the money go straight to her head. She enjoys herself on big spending sprees buying clothing, accessories, hats in all colours, and shoes. Anything to make her look chic and not like the old Cassie. Along with the package comes new friends in London who she tries to emulate in dress code, and she has never looked better.

Intent on setting up a home in London as she commits herself to working in a clinic there, she becomes extremely selfish with her time spending lots of time away from Edward and her little ones. In fact she now sees her husband's practice in the country as a dead end job and challenges him to transfer to London which would be more lucrative for him, but he bluntly refuses for he greatly dislikes the idea of her working again and he is not comfortable with London or her new found friends. Plus he argues that there would be nobody else to give aid to his country folk. How could he just leave them out in the cold?

As her relationship with her husband quivers on shaky ground, Cassie Fallon wings with the jet set, ignoring him and neglecting her children. She tells lies, commits infidelities amd becomes a bigger spendrift as the time passes.
With the assortment of loveable and unloveable characters the suspense of this novel is killing. Read it and you'll find out where the fortune actually came from and the circumstances that drove Cassie Fallon to travel to France and even Africa for answers to this big question.

As usual, Penny Vincenzi's never fails her readers. This is another delightful one from her that I highly recommend.

Heather Marshall
September 3rd 2001

I love Penny Vincenzi's books. After buying all the ones available in the U.S., I started ordering the rest from the U.K. or second hand sellers and now own all 13. However, I'm taking my time reading them -- spacing them out so as to have some to look forward to. Like rich food, you don't want to read two Vincenzi blockbusters in a row. WINDFALL is my eleventh to read and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. It's funny about this book, though. The back cover copy calls the main character Cassia Fallon, (the single other reviewer here calls her Fallon, too) yet in the book her name is Cassia Tallow, not Fallon. I find that extremely odd.

The book begins when Cassia (for Cassiopeia, after the constellation) Tallow, an unhappy, frustrated housewife stuck in a small village with her G.P. doctor husband and three young children, receives a windfall inheritance from her godmother of more than 500,000 pounds. The year is 1935, so I figure in today's money, that amount equates to around 25 million pounds. The money changes Cassia's life -- enables her to become the person she always thought she would be -- independent, able to resume her medical career if she chooses, able to buy anything she desires. But what seems to be an undreamed of blessing soon shows itself to also be the instrument that may destroy her marriage and her reputation.

The story unfolds the way all of Vincenzi's stories unfold: filled with larger-than-life characters, drama, suspense, thrills, sex, jewels, gorgeous homes and clothes, and lush descriptions of the lives of the rich and privileged of English aristocracy.

Vincenzi's novels are extremely compelling reading. Once you start one, all you want to do is read it non-stop. WINDFALL is no exception.

In the mid-1930s, all of England --- especially the jet-setting upper class that brushes elbows with royalty on occasion --- is abuzz with rumors of the new young king, Edward VIII, and his scandalous relationship with the American divorcee, Wallis Warfield Simpson, a love affair that will create a constitutional crisis and ultimately result in Edward's abdication of the throne.

This real-life historical drama lies in the background of WINDFALL, Penny Vincenzi's latest book to be released in the United States (it was originally published in the United Kingdom in 1997). The royal crisis underscores several of the novel's themes, most notably the transition between a "traditional" understanding of marriage and sexuality to one that more closely resembles our modern views. Vincenzi also explores the life-altering conflict between desire and duty and how it seems that a person can have one or the other, but never both.

Cassia Tallow, the complex heroine of WINDFALL, discovers her own conflict between duty and desire almost as soon as the novel opens when Cassia receives a large inheritance from her recently deceased godmother whom she had thought was penniless. She is now rich beyond her wildest dreams. At first, Cassia is drawn to the expected luxuries: a fancy sports car and chic clothes that she, as the mother of three young children and wife of a humble country doctor, could never have afforded before.

Soon, however, Cassia sets her sights somewhat higher as she realizes that this unexpected wealth might enable her to revive her own dreams of becoming a practicing physician, dreams that were thwarted when an unexpected pregnancy and reluctant marriage put an end to her promising medical school career. But her husband, Edward, who struggled to pass medical school, grows increasingly resentful of Cassia's aspirations. He initiates a war of passive aggression that escalates when Cassia rents a house in London and when Edward sends their oldest son, only six years old, to boarding school.

Meanwhile, Cassia's medical work near London has brought her back into the fashionable crowd with whom she associated in her younger, unmarried days. These include the second-rate actor Rupert Cameron, her oldest friend and first love, and the maddeningly stubborn and rakishly attractive Harry Moreton, who has long professed his alternating passion for and annoyance with Cassia. Fueled by her new financial independence, Cassia finds herself making questionable choices that could affect not only her friends but also her entire family. And, to complicate matters, Cassia soon starts to suspect that the inheritance from her godmother might not be quite what it seems, and it could even have a few strings attached.

WINDFALL starts by focusing quite exclusively on Cassia's own story, beginning with her discovery of the inheritance and, through a series of flashbacks, introducing readers to the character's history. As the novel does so, however, it also broadens gradually to encompass a dozen or more of Cassia's friends and acquaintances, each of whom has his or her own story to be explored. Vincenzi manages to create the kind of broad, panoramic canvas she loves to paint, as marriages are threatened and destroyed, individuals come to the brink of despair or reinvent themselves in new and surprising ways, and the inevitable happy (but sometimes bittersweet) endings come into view.

Vincenzi excels at depicting the upper classes, at describing their elegant clothes and homes, their lavish parties, and also their petty squabbles. Here, though, she goes beyond mere idolatry of the rich, as she contrasts their internal dramas with the far more dire circumstances facing lower- and working-class women like the ones Cassia treats at her birth control clinics. She also explores conflicted and changing ideas of sexuality as they existed in the 1930s, depicting both characters who freely convey their era's prejudices and those who are beginning to adopt more modern attitudes.

However, at the center of it all is Cassia, one of Vincenzi's most complicated and compelling heroines. Despite her numerous ethically questionable choices, Cassia remains a genuinely sympathetic character, especially for modern women readers who will rejoice that the available choices for ambitious women have come so far from Cassia's time.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

It was very helpful to find out that this is a book that was first published in 1997.
I think it is very misleading for a publisher to change the title and let readers
think this is a new book!

Set in 1930's London--Cassia has always wanted to be a doctor but becoming pregnant by her medical school lover moves her onto the wife/motherhood path, and she tries to be gracious while her husband, a less worthy candidate for a medical practice, lives out a diminished version of her dreams. All that changes when she unexpectedly receives a windfall, a large inheritance from her entrancing but troubled godmother. Now Cassia can tentatively reenter the sophisticated society she left behind when she became a country doctor's wife, and start to do some good by providing birth control and medical care for working class women who have already had too many babies. Her husband is not pleased, but author Penny Vincenzi is very good at arousing readers' sympathy and understanding for even her most incorrigible or infuriating characters. The panoply of smart, talented, urbane characters that fill the book make excellent company and they each find their most suitable, though sometimes surprising, mate or destiny by the end. These characters wrestle with their choices as Edward VIII is facing a similar struggle, trying to balance love and duty while making a decision about marrying American divorcée Wallis Simpson.

A great Vincenzi novel, as usual. Just what you want when you order her books. It has all the usual elements and story twists and turns. As with all of her books, I find myself reading until 1:00 am and waking up red-eyed in the morning.

Buy it. This book, in particular, will not disappoint!

I bought this thinking it was new, but it was a reissue of a book I read in 1997. Dirty pool. I sent it back.

This was my first Vincenzi novel, but I'll be reading more. Critics can label this a "bonkbuster" if they must, but I thought it was just a good solid read with great characters and a rich historical setting.

I am mildly obsessed with this author, but since her novels are each so long, it takes me a while to start another one. This one is a particular favorite, both for its setting (Edwardian England) and its characters, who are all so vividly painted. I liked the idea of a woman doctor in the early 20th century in England, and found the uncomfortable situations she was in to be totally believable.
Fabulous read!

This was a lovely book and I am so glad I picked it up. This was the frist Penny Vincenzi book I read and now I intend to read more.