THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN

TITLE: THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN

AUTHOR: ELISSA WALD

Pages: 220

Date: 11/10/2013

Grade: 4+

Details: Received from Hard Case Crime

            Through Nudge

Own

Leda and Lillian are identical twins yet very different. While Leda has always been the wild one with a free and adventurous spirit, Lillian is a lot more repressed and has lived her life according to a strict plan.  Now that they’re both in their thirties and married their lives should be settled but both women are about to discover that life still holds shocks and surprises.

Leda has just moved into a new house with her Russian husband and young daughter. Even before she moves in she attracts the attention of the builder working on the house next door. And before she’s quite aware of it the man seems to be around all the time, constantly finding opportunities to be in her company and in her house. Leda has found herself a stalker who knows more about her past than even her husband does and Leda can’t help being afraid of the man. She doesn’t know what fear is though, until the builder disappears and the police start investigating what happened to him.

Lillian is preparing for what may well be one of the most difficult trails of her career when she discovers her sister’s dark secret and a side to her husband that she never knew existed. When the facts she uncovers for the trail show links to the secret her sister has kept for so long, Lillian finds herself discovering things about herself she never knew.

This is a strange one for me. The Secret Lives of Married Women was a very easy book to read and yet it is proving very hard to review. Part of the problem is due to the fact that rather than one continuous story, this book contains two separate narratives. While there are some links between Leda’s and Lillian’s stories, these are superficial at best. The continuity lies in the fact that both sisters find themselves in situations they are ill prepared for and dealing with them in ways they wouldn’t have been able to imagine. If, like me, you find yourself waiting for a closer connection between the two stories to be revealed you will be disappointed; I know I was.

I was also slightly bewildered that my favourite character in this book was not either of the two sisters but rather a secondary character in Lillian’s story. Nan’s story, for me, was the most powerful and heart-wrenching one. The orphan raised by nuns who resigns her job as a professional submissive when she has the opportunity to become the personal assistant for a blind developer, only to lose what has been the best thing that ever happened to her, was equally beautiful and devastating. Unfortunately I can’t say more without completely spoiling the story.

The cover of this book seems to suggest that this is a rather sexy, if not raunchy book. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this erotic fiction though. Most of the story is either completely sex free or alludes to it only in the vaguest terms. However, there are one or two scenes that truly steam up the pages. Lillian’s encounter in a Hilton Hotel, during which she submits to everything she has been claiming to abhor is, for lack of a better word, hot. But my favourite moment in the book is probably when Nan is being interviewed for a job and, while admitting to being a professional submissive, realises that the welts she has on her back are bleeding into her blouse. A realisation which is quickly followed by the comforting thought that for once it really doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t call this a crime novel either even though there is an investigation in Leda’s part of the story and a trail in Lillian’s. In fact, I’m not quite sure how to label this book.

What I can say with certainty is that this is a good book that managed to surprise me on several occasions. This is a very well written novel containing a fascinating and easy to read story which is never quite what you expect it to be. And in these days when a lot of books appear to be written according to a formula, that makes a very nice change.

AMBITION

TITLE: AMBITION

AUTHOR: JULIE BURCHILL

Pages: 372

Date: 11/05/2013

Grade: 3.5

Details: Received from Corvus Books

           Through Nudge

Own

Susan Street is ambitious. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, she won’t do to get her dream job. She is determined to become the editor of the Sunday Best newspaper. When the book starts it seems that she may have achieved her goal. The current editor is lying in hotel bed where he has spent his last living minutes having sex with her, and if she had a hand in his demise, she’s is quick to destroy the evidence before calling in the authorities.

Picture Susan’s disappointment when she arrives back in the office only to find that the paper has a new owner and Tobias X Pope has no intention of just giving the editor’s job to her, at least not without her fulfilling a few of his demands. Pope will set Susan six tasks, all devised to break her. If she completes all of them, the job will be hers. If she breaks before she has come to the end of the last task, she will have lost everything.

Susan Street is ambitious. She’s come from nowhere and has done whatever happened to be necessary to make it as far as she has, and she has no intention of giving up on her dream now, regardless of what the price might be. And so she allows Pope to take her on a depraved journey, designed to humiliate and destroy her. From a tattoo parlour in London, to Rio and from Sun City, via New York to Thailand, Susan submits to all sorts of deprived sexual acts, keeping her eye on the price all the time.

The rest of Susan’s life refuses to sit on the back- burner while she working on her career though. The relationship with the man she’s living with goes from indifferent to worse, she falls in love and lust with Pope’s son and rivals and enemies old and new are determined to destroy her any whichever way they can.

Susan’s life has just become a lot more interesting and scandalous than the stories she edits. A happy ending seems unlikely.

The front cover blurb from the author herself announces that this book

“Makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like Anne of Green Gables”

And I guess that is one way of putting is. Except that there really is nothing in this book that resembles the Fifty Shades book. E.L. James’ book was a romance, be it a steamy one. This book is nothing like a romance. In fact it is quite the opposite of a romantic tale. While there is a lot of quite shocking sex in this book there is a distinct lack of intimacy and romance. The characters in ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ evoked emotions in the reader and showed character development as the story went on. The characters in this book read more like caricatures of a time – the 1980’s and cling unashamedly to their lack of morals. There is absolutely no doubt what sort of a man Tobias X Pope is. He fires Susan seconds after throwing a glass of water over her chest only to call her that evening and offer her the job back. What do you mean, playing her? And when they meet in a restaurant the following statement by him removes all doubt about his character:

“Punctuality! One of the great virtues! (…) And so much more important than all those milk-and-water so-called virtues like honesty, decency and loyalty. I call those vices: soul-sapping things only to be indulged in by those who’ve cancelled their subscription to the human race.”

And he makes no secret of his intentions either:

“You do what I want, and you get what you want. Or you break”

And the same is true for Susan. If she ever had a heart she’s learnt how to hide it well. Susan is not just ambitious; she is ambition personified. She has no shame and no scruples when it comes to achieving her goals. There are one or two occasions when it seems like things like morals and friendship might halt her progress but her drive to succeed manages to squash such feeble sentiments before she finds herself in real danger of having to give up on her dream. Having said that, she did make me smile on quite a few occasions, and once or twice found herself almost putting her conscience before her ambition; almost, but not quite.

This may be a sex filled book; it is not a sexy read. I found nothing tantalising or exciting in the descriptions of the scenes Susan finds herself in. And we find her in all sorts of sexual situation: with two men, with numerous women, on public display and in several one-on-ones with Pope's son. However these are written in a rather matter of fact way or even only alluded to. The reader is giving a rather clinical description of what is happening and I didn't find it tantalising at all. On the other hand, I did appreciate Susan's statement about kinky sex:

“Taking the dirt out of sex seems to me as self-defeating as taking the taste out of food.”

In fact, I can’t help feeling that these scenes were written to shock the reader. But then again, that can be said for the rest of the book too. A reader picking up this book hoping to find a story in which loves brings redemption, or a read that will titillate and excite them will probably end up disappointed. Read this book as a hard-hitting, well written, at times funny but also shocking portrayal of the (lack of) morals during the Yuppie era, and you have a fascinating experience on your hands.