The Scandal of the Season (ISBN 1598875299)

The boreof the season:
It was on p. 89 ("Lord Petre liked the way Charlotte Bromleigh bit his shoulder when she had an orgasm") that I finally decided that I did not care in the least for the people in this novel or their various schemes, passions, machinations and ambitions. Basically, all these things seem to be exactly the right ingredients for a a good read, but the author somehow managed to assemble from them a tiresome plot revolving around more or less lifeless puppets and told in a prose devoid of flavour, zest and spirit. 18th century settings usually cast an easy spell on my imagination, but there was no narrative magic for me in these pages crammed with wooden phrasing, and when it became a matter of plodding through paragraph after paragraph, I saw no point in continuing the exercise. Mind you, I read only about a third of the book, and it might just be that beyond my point of exhaustion the 18th century dazzlingly and suggestively unfolds in all its seductive glitter and diverting squalor. The book might also be much fun for the cognoscenti who can rattle off 'The Rape of the Lock' and take delight in erudite allusions, but people like me, who are neither particulary patient nor particularly well acquainted with Pope's verses, might like to look out for other scandals.

18th century gossip:
In 18th century London, an aspiring young poet, Alexander Pope follows his childhood friends, sisters Martha and Teresa Blount to London for the "season", where he hopes to gain entree to the inner circles of society. The "in" people converse in what they think to be a witty and flirtatious style,in brief, sometimes acerbic sentences which allude to a person's background and breeding. One of the current leading lights of Society is Lord Petre who hails from an old Catholic family and whose financial support is being sought by a group of Jacobites who are planning to restore James Stuart to the throne after assassinating Queen Anne. At first I didn't find it easy to keep up with the story until I began to look at it as a dance, with the main characters tripping delicately around, using academically clever sentences while never saying exactly what they mean, with elegant phrases and then firing a shock into the reader with unexpectedly raunchy statements. In his now famous poem, The Rape of the Lock, Pope wrote the story of Lord Petre's romance with the beautiful Arabella (named Belinda in the poem), joining the romance with broad hints of a Jacobite plot, and eventually became the wealthiest satirist of his day.

Smart, fun, historical read:
I read this book for my book club, and we all really enjoyed it. It didn't give us a ton to discuss, but it's definitely a fun read. I had a hard time putting it down!

A little too clean and lightweight:
While I respect the author's scholarly credentials, this novel did seem a very cleaned-up version of the times it meant to represent. Well, nothing wrong with an occasional light read, but there could have been more intrigue.

A fun read, but a little dissapointing in the end:
I received this book as a Christmas gift, and I was anxious to read it because I usually really enjoy historical fiction. Unfortunately I felt like this book was more romance than history. I mostly enjoyed the romance, and at times the book really was a page turner. But in the end the novel felt a little flat. The characters were quite flat, and there was little of the historical element that I had been expecting. The author writes well, so I hope if there is another novel it has more of a historical slant.