Amazon.co.uk Review
Deborah Moggach's Final Demand is a bleak, uncompromising novel about the greed and selfishness of Natalie, the novel's tough, street-wise heroine. Natalie, who works for "NuLine Communications", a soulless telecommunications company based in Leeds, is frustrated by the realisation that "the next big thing in her life should be happening but thought time was speeding up, the days whisking past, a breathlessness to them now, [her] life remained doggedly the same". She is pretty and intelligent, but when her boyfriend dumps her and she runs into financial problems, she sees the opportunity to turn her boring job processing cheques to her advantage. But first of all, her ingenious plan requires a husband with a very specific name...
Final Demand is very different from Moggach's enormously successful Tulip Fever, but it catches the amoral, cynical world of Natalie and all the characters that she proceeds to dupe in a series of ever bleaker situations. Natalie's crimes seem small, but Moggach attempts to unravel the ways in which even the most trivial crime can have devastating consequences. At times, the story loses focus as Moggach follows those affected by Natalie's misdemeanours, while her heroine is so thoroughly selfish that it become difficult to sympathise with her plight. However, Final Demand neatly captures the soulless sign of the times. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
Praise for "Tulip Fever":
"Sumptuous and enthralling... her characters are thoroughly known and their contortions in the cage of materialism are evoked with compassion, wit and humour." - "The Times"
"Deborah Moggach can fit a complex idea onto a postage stamp... ordinary human crises are described tersely, compassionately, and with a wit as dry as the Sahara." - "Independent"
"Sumptuous and enthralling... her characters are thoroughly known and their contortions in the cage of materialism are evoked with compassion, wit and humour." - "The Times"
"Deborah Moggach can fit a complex idea onto a postage stamp... ordinary human crises are described tersely, compassionately, and with a wit as dry as the Sahara." - "Independent"
The Times
‘Sumptuous and enthralling...a passionate precision, a delight in the sensual that is reminiscent of Michèle Roberts... evoked with compassion, wit and humour’
Daily Mail
‘The undercurrents that wash through the book tackle complex themes ... and give it the depth and richness that Ms Moggach’s fans have come to expect’
The Mail on Sunday
'Moggach's delight in spinning her story, and in the minor characters she invents, is infectious'.
Book Description
From the author of Tulip Fever comes a poignant novel of human frailty, temptation and tragedy
Product Description
Natalie is a girl who should be going somewhere. Beautiful, bright and ambitious, she's stuck in a dead end job in the accounts department of Nu-Line Telecommunications. Living her life through wild weekends, yearning for something more. When she sees a chance to change her life, she takes it. After all, its' only a minor crime. Nobody will be hurt, will they? But Colin gets hurt. He's the man who Natalie marries. And other people's lives are changed, terribly and irrevocably. Because Natalie's actions do have consequences - tragic consequences. Poignant and beautifully written, Deborah Moggach's new novel is a cautionary tale about the terrible battle between desires and greed, about human hopes and our own frailty in the face of temptation.
About the Author
Deborah Moggach is the author of thirteen previous novels, the most recent being Tulip Fever. Her TV screenplays include her own Close Relations and the highly acclaimed Love in a Cold Climate for the BBC. She is Chair of the Society of Authors and lives in London. (20020218)
Excerpted from Final Demand by Deborah Moggach. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
They blamed it on global warming. It's a wake-up call, they said. It's a sign of what's to come. All that November it rained. Britain was flooded, great swathes of it. On the news, the quaint names of rivers became as familiar as those of the latest celebrities. Day after day gales blew, buffeting Natalie's car when she drove to work, rocking it at traffic lights. Perhaps that had something to do with it, with her restlessness, with a feeling of Is this all there is?
The future of the planet held no interest for her; she seldom read newspapers. The rain, however, affected her. It trapped her in the present tense, the clouds blocking any vista beyond, any possibilities. She was trapped at work, perspiring under the strip lights. Back home she felt unsettled yet torpid, sitting on the edge of the bath and then realizing, with a jolt, that an hour had passed.
Something should be happening. The next big thing in her life should be happening but though time was speeding up, the days whisking past, a breathlessness to them now, Natalie's life remained doggedly the same. She was thirty-two. When she paused to consider this, the accumulation of years startled her. She found it hard to apply thirty-two to herself. Until recently she had been carried heedlessly in the current but now she found herself stilled in the bathroom, gazing at the fogged-up mirror, thinking: what next?
She rubbed herself dry whilst Kieran sat in the next room, channel-hopping. He should be a part of the what next? but when she went into the lounge there he sprawled, in a fug of smoke, and words failed her. They had lived together for three years. She adored him. She adored the way his finger traced her skin, under her dressing gown, with his eyes still fixed on the screen. She adored his fine profile, his mouth twitching as he smiled. His hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was tied with a band he had nicked from her bag.
Words failed her because he seemed content, and until recently, so had she. This new desire to shunt things forward made her shy with him. It revealed her to be like the girls at work, like large plain Stacey who had the hots for Derek in Dispatch and who dreamed of marriage and babies, doodling his surname on her jotter, MRS STACEY WINDSOR . . . MRS S. WINDSOR . . . Natalie pitied this; the naked need seemed humiliating. And then the desire would grip her, so strongly it stopped her breath.
She had no illusions about Kieran. He was a flirt. He sponged off her and stayed out late, supposedly with his mates. He worked when the mood took him, as a motorbike courier, roaring round Leeds on his Kawasaki 500 and chatting up receptionists. One day he might roar off and never return. She had a shameful desire to keep him to herself. He was like a deer, captured and kept in domesticity; one day he would grow restless and make a break for the wild.
This was how she felt, those dark autumn weeks with their turbulent, un-British storms. It's a warning, they said.
They blamed it on global warming. It's a wake-up call, they said. It's a sign of what's to come. All that November it rained. Britain was flooded, great swathes of it. On the news, the quaint names of rivers became as familiar as those of the latest celebrities. Day after day gales blew, buffeting Natalie's car when she drove to work, rocking it at traffic lights. Perhaps that had something to do with it, with her restlessness, with a feeling of Is this all there is?
The future of the planet held no interest for her; she seldom read newspapers. The rain, however, affected her. It trapped her in the present tense, the clouds blocking any vista beyond, any possibilities. She was trapped at work, perspiring under the strip lights. Back home she felt unsettled yet torpid, sitting on the edge of the bath and then realizing, with a jolt, that an hour had passed.
Something should be happening. The next big thing in her life should be happening but though time was speeding up, the days whisking past, a breathlessness to them now, Natalie's life remained doggedly the same. She was thirty-two. When she paused to consider this, the accumulation of years startled her. She found it hard to apply thirty-two to herself. Until recently she had been carried heedlessly in the current but now she found herself stilled in the bathroom, gazing at the fogged-up mirror, thinking: what next?
She rubbed herself dry whilst Kieran sat in the next room, channel-hopping. He should be a part of the what next? but when she went into the lounge there he sprawled, in a fug of smoke, and words failed her. They had lived together for three years. She adored him. She adored the way his finger traced her skin, under her dressing gown, with his eyes still fixed on the screen. She adored his fine profile, his mouth twitching as he smiled. His hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was tied with a band he had nicked from her bag.
Words failed her because he seemed content, and until recently, so had she. This new desire to shunt things forward made her shy with him. It revealed her to be like the girls at work, like large plain Stacey who had the hots for Derek in Dispatch and who dreamed of marriage and babies, doodling his surname on her jotter, MRS STACEY WINDSOR . . . MRS S. WINDSOR . . . Natalie pitied this; the naked need seemed humiliating. And then the desire would grip her, so strongly it stopped her breath.
She had no illusions about Kieran. He was a flirt. He sponged off her and stayed out late, supposedly with his mates. He worked when the mood took him, as a motorbike courier, roaring round Leeds on his Kawasaki 500 and chatting up receptionists. One day he might roar off and never return. She had a shameful desire to keep him to herself. He was like a deer, captured and kept in domesticity; one day he would grow restless and make a break for the wild.
This was how she felt, those dark autumn weeks with their turbulent, un-British storms. It's a warning, they said.
