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The Birthday Present

Barbara Vine

Those who feel that Ruth Rendell's best writing is done under her Barbara Vine nom-de-plume (and there are many who do) will need little persuasion to pick up The Birthday Present. But the fact that this is something of a departure for the author -- under either of her names -- may give them pause.
Margaret Thatcher's days as prime minister are over, and the John Major era of the Conservative party is about to begin. The media is full of tales of sleaze and corruption, and it is not a good time to be a Tory Member of Parliament. However, Ivor Tesham is sanguine: money is no object to him; he is charismatic and attractive, and he is in the middle of a passionate affair. The fly in the ointment is the fact that this is an adulterous relationship: not a happy state of affairs when PM John Major has made 'Back to Basics' morality and 'Victorian Values' the new yardsticks for his variously philandering and kickback-taking MPs. Ivor and his lover -- the beautiful Hebe Furnal -- share a particular erotic predilection; a taste for bondage and the more risky extremes of sexuality. Ivor arranges for a mock kidnapping in line with the couple's games, but, needless to say (this is a Barbara Vine novel, after all), things quickly go pear-shaped, and Igor find that everything he holds dear is about to be stripped away from him.
As this synopsis suggests, Rendell is moving into even more incendiary territory than she has traversed before, and the political element makes the experiment even more piquant. Those who know Rendell's association with the Labour Party (she is a working peer) might assume that a novel which rekindles all the sleaze of the last Tory government (particularly when the latest incarnation of the party is riding high in the polls) is a political act, but Rendell/Vine is far too sophisticated a writer to fall into that trap. In fact, this is one of the most ingenious and disturbing books. As often before with her, the stake for the central character could not be higher and it is impossible not to be drawn into the plight of the beleaguered Ivor (not for the first time, we are reminded of the author's distinguished American predecessor Patricia Highsmith). The Birthday Present,disturbing as it is, will sit happily on your shelves alongside all the other Barbara Vine titles -- and if you don't possess them, why not? --Barry Forshaw
The Other Side of You

Salley Vickers
Miss Garnet's Angel

Salley Vickers

There is something very old-fashioned and reassuring about Sally Vickers' novel Miss Garnet's Angel. The themes, self-discovery and redemption have the air of a bygone age, despite the novel being set in contemporary Venice in a world of holiday apartment lets and Pizza Express-funded restoration works. Julia Garnet is a middle-aged woman who has been practising economies of the spirit for years. Hers is a closed-in world, dusty with Marx's theories and when her friend and flatmate of 30 years dies Julia decides to spend the six winter months in Venice to recuperate from her loss. Miss Garnet is a dignified, brusque heroine and Sally Vickers' prose is likewise unruffled and controlled. Miss Garnet's epiphanies are as quiet and subtle as the "oro pallido" (pale gold) light in early Italian Art because, of course, art plays a part in this Venetian tale of emotional reawakening. Julia is moved by the depiction of Raphael in Guardis Tobias and the Angel: "something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet as she stood absorbing the vivid dewy painting and the unmistakable compassion in the angel's bright glance." She falls in love with Carlo, an art historian with crinkly eyes, white hair and a moustache. There are trials and tribulations to be undergone, Julia must unlearn all her old regimented ways of life, and this brings about heart ache and hurt. However, Vickers handles this with delicate sympathy, giving Julia Garnet a new sensitive view of the world, and the reader a resonant story of transformation. --Eithne Farry
Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths)

Salley Vickers
Forbidden Places

Penny Vincenzi
Into Temptation

Penny Vincenzi
A Dark-adapted Eye

Barbara Vine
Old Sins

Penny Vincenzi
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir

Gore Vidal
An Absolute Scandal

Penny Vincenzi
Another Woman

Penny Vincenzi
Mr.Golightly's Holiday

Salley Vickers

Fiction readers with a sweet tooth and a high tolerance of Anglican whimsy are offered much beguilement in Sally Vickers' new novel Mr Golightly's Holiday. Set in the Devon village of Great Calne, it records the events observed, and in part precipitated, by Mr Golightly, the author of a work once famous but now tending to be overlooked, who has elected to settle himself in this community for a while. Mr Golightly himself, a rumpled, elderly figure arriving in a half-timbered Traveller van, is a familiar enough version of "the male author"; Great Calne, an apparently idyllic village with a wide range of carefully differentiated characters, but underneath seething with unseen discontents and rivalries, is itself another easily summoned trope--the kind of community now perhaps most commonly encountered in fictional terms in TV shows. This is handy, for Mr Golightly decides that the best way of dragging his great work into the limelight of popularity and relevance is to recast it as a soap opera. In the event, he makes little headway with this project because, of course, the affairs of the village become all-absorbing and gradually draw him in. And so things unfold, as the characters carefully established by Sally Vickers work out their destinies in a mixture of social comedy (some of it very sharp), melodrama, nature mysticism and visionary redemption that delivers far more than the opening paragraphs can suggest. Moreover, the precise identity of Mr Golightly, while not exactly part of the plot, is disclosed gradually and may come as a surprise to some.
It should be said that this is not really a novel, although it does offer many of the satisfactions of a novel. It is a fable with distinctly eschatological overtones, and as such runs the general risks of the genre, most of which are successfully negotiated. --Robin Davidson
No Angel

Penny Vincenzi

Penny Vincenzi's No Angel is probably her most accomplished novel yet, and draws on many elements of the author's own life in journalism and publishing. Since inaugurating her writing career with Old Sins, Vincenzi has developed into one of the most stylish and compelling writers of blockbusting fiction with such novels as Another Woman, Forbidden Places, and Almost a Crime achieving phenomenal sales and a devoted readership that follows her work very closely.
Set in Lyttons, a great publishing house, this saga takes us into the lives of the family who owns it, and the dramas of crossed loyalties, ambition and deception inform a narrative that carries the reader along with great gusto. Vincenzi's canvas at the start of the book is the Edwardian era known as the Belle Époque, a time in which society contrasted hedonistic luxury and great social deprivation, with the First World War waiting in the wings to sweep so much away.
Celia Lytton is the firm-minded and ambitious wife of Oliver Lytton, the head of the publishing house that bears his name. Sylvia Miller, coming from a background of crushing poverty, is threatened by Celia's intrusion into her life, when Sylvia's youngest daughter is taken from the family to join the Lyttons and move in a different social circle. Sebastian Brooke, the author of a much-acclaimed children's book, finds himself both professionally and personally involved with the ambitious Celia.
This is the first volume in a series, The Spoils of Time, and Vincenzi sets out her stall impressively. We are very quickly involved in the larger-than-life experiences of these powerfully drawn characters, and as well as telling a thoroughly involving tale, the author is able to deal with some serious questions over good and evil. Most of all, it is her charismatic characters (such as the willful Celia) that make a lasting impression on the reader and the author's ability to keep the reader engrossed:
Celia had been right, Oliver was initially resistant to the risks of making love to her; but a mixture of emotional blackmail and a determined onslaught on his senses worked quite quickly. They found a physical delight in each other almost at once; Oliver was not exactly experienced, indeed his own knowledge had been gained at the hands of a couple of chorus girls introduced by his best friend at Oxford, but it was sufficient to guide him through Celia's initiation.
--Barry Forshaw
The Dilemma

Penny Vincenzi
Something Dangerous [The Spoils of Time trilogy volume 2]

Penny Vincenzi

Particular skills are required in a novel the size of Penny Vincenzi's Something Dangerous: strong, powerfully drawn characters, yes; colourful, authentic scene-setting, of course. But what's needed above all else is organisation: an author must know how to bring together all the elements to create an inexorable hold on the reader. It's no surprise to find Vincenzi doing just that. Through such engrossing novels as Another Woman, Forbidden Places and No Angel, she has effortlessly woven an unbreakable spell that ensures few readers will be able to put her intelligently written romantic sagas down.
Something Dangerous (like No Angel) introduces a sharply observed element of social commentary into its epic-saga format, along with a vivid panoply of international history from the frantic 20s to the two World Wars. Adele and Venetia Lytton are twins enjoying all the social prestige and wealth that their position as daughters of the founder of a highly successful publishing empire can give them. At the age of 18, they make up for a lack of formal education with a confidence and cheek that isn't too far from arrogance. As the 30s begin, the twins put the horrors of the 1914 conflict behind them--but their adulthood coincides with the sinister rise of Nazi Germany. Soon, their privileged position comes to seem hollow indeed: Venetia finds that being trapped in a grim marriage is only the beginning of her misery, while Adele struggles to bring up two young children in a Paris that is being engulfed by the war. Then there is Bart Miller, taken from the slums by the twins' mother and more able to cope with life than Adele or Venetia. And crucial to the narrative is Laurence Elliott, scion of the family's New York members, single-mindedly pursuing an almost obsessive love. The interaction of Vincenzi's fascinatingly rendered cast is choreographed with her usual aplomb, and the epic backdrop never dwarfs the agonies and ecstasies of her characters.--Barry Forshaw
Asta's Book

Barbara Vine
Windfall

Penny Vincenzi
Wicked Pleasures

Penny Vincenzi
The Brimstone Wedding

Barbara Vine
Almost a Crime

Penny Vincenzi