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moderndiscerningwoman 's review for:
The Affair
by Santa Montefiore
I SO wanted to love this book. Santa Montefiore seems like such a wonderful person in all of the articles and interviews, and she is married to the brilliant historian Simon Sebag Montefiore who writes such great books. I also wanted her to take the place of Joanna Trollope whose tens of books I have read, devoured and adored for the most part. I wanted her to be clever and funny and moving like Marian Keyes.
I am so sorry to report that The Affair just wasn’t that good.
Ritual lighting of Diptyque candles and having a friend who owns more than one Birkin does not a central protagonist make.
I mean we get it, the shorthand for lavish lifestyles, but I don’t read novels for shorthand, I read them because I want to FEEL it. Like Tom Wolfe’s A MAN IN FULL, when he describes the sound of the clippers of the gardener, and the lace on the pillows in the stroller - he gives you the pleasures of affluence in three dimensions. I read that book decades ago and I still remember those descriptions.
This is sort of a marathon of alcoholic lunches and lusty daydreams - both of which I heartily endorse. But here, it seems thin to me, flat. Somehow bloodless.
I am disappointed.
I am so sorry to report that The Affair just wasn’t that good.
Ritual lighting of Diptyque candles and having a friend who owns more than one Birkin does not a central protagonist make.
I mean we get it, the shorthand for lavish lifestyles, but I don’t read novels for shorthand, I read them because I want to FEEL it. Like Tom Wolfe’s A MAN IN FULL, when he describes the sound of the clippers of the gardener, and the lace on the pillows in the stroller - he gives you the pleasures of affluence in three dimensions. I read that book decades ago and I still remember those descriptions.
This is sort of a marathon of alcoholic lunches and lusty daydreams - both of which I heartily endorse. But here, it seems thin to me, flat. Somehow bloodless.
I am disappointed.