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Review
‘In Elizabeth Judd, Katherine Bucknell's first novel creates a tyrannical anti-heroine comparable to Somerville and Ross' malevolent Charlotte Mullen in The Real Charlotte … The twisting machinations of this she-devil are recounted with a sharp irony that stings like a splash of lemon juice on a cut finger.’ Sunday Times
'A remarkably vigorous and subtle first novel: it is written with commanding authority and is impressively accomplished. The plotting is bold and alluring. The characters are vividly realised, forensically examined … beautifully observed. The writing throughout is spare and punctilious.' Independent
'A memorable debut' Observer
'An artistic triumph' Sunday Telegraph
'An impressively structured novel.' Spectator
'A sharp, pacily written examination of a marriage in slow motion.' Time Out
‘The best first novel I’ve read this year … notable for its skilful design and exceptionally good prose’ Frank Kermode, TLS
'Divorce, money, sexy men and classy prose. Chick lit for clever girls.' Style Magazine, Sunday Times
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Customer Reviews
This portrait of an American expatriate couple living in London in a style exuding material wealth yet emotional poverty evokes simultaneously envy and pity. Money secures power and control, but happiness is more elusive. Financially wanting for nothing, the anti-heroine knows that she is an absentee mother, even when she is at home with her children; knows that she is an absentee wife even when she is in bed with her husband; she is a 'control freak' even to the point of having both her children by caesarean section. Her obsessions are all-consuming. Her husband, who is available always to his clients and his young, attractive investment banking associates, but rarely to his emotionally deprived children, is nonetheless painted with more compassion; when his wife disappears into her neuroses, he tries to compensate his children with the fun he remembers from his childhood family.
The most sympathetically drawn, and in many ways believable, characters in this book are the two gays; the one, a superbly rounded character, the catalyst for the couple; and the other, his partner, skilfully crafted to avoid stereotyping.
Above all, enjoy this book for its poetry; the languid beauty of the Virginia countryside in the heat of the summer; the heady vibrancy of the motor cycle ride through the London night; the traffic on the Embankment which "pauses and shouts, pauses and shouts" and the minutiae of metaphorical detail which infuses the novel throughout.
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