- Hardcover: 346 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Company; First Edition edition (28 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316724858
- ISBN-13: 978-0316724852
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13.6 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,089,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Love In Idleness
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Product Description
Review
A Tuscan holiday with four couples plus children which turns into something of a nightmare but ends well. It is all planned carefully, but before the end all have swapped partners and the romantic comedy takes on a feeling of fantasy with the children inevitably involved in what is happening. It is a delightful comedy, which will enhance any summer activity. The author is a well-known journalist and broadcaster who has a wicked sense of humour and a splendid quality of observation for human foibles.
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY – Vanessa Curtis
'Fiction at its best: sparkling, witty, readable, thought-provoking, but not taking itself too seriously. A fantastic summer read'
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First Sentence
The long wooden shutters of the Casa Luna, bolted against heat and crime, were flung open, and the light of a new day flooded in. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The long wooden shutters of the Casa Luna, bolted against heat and crime, were flung open, and the light of a new day flooded in. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pure enchantment,
By Anne Latitudes (Paris, France) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Love in Idleness (Hardcover)
Once again, Amanda Craig has woven a spell over this reader! What a truly delightful novel - lighter than In a Dark Wood, but no less funny, wise and beautifully written. Concerning a group of friends and relations who go away for a fortnight to the Casa Luna, where their bored children create mischief, it explores the difference in love, work and generosity between English and American people. The characters are completely believeable, moving in and out of the serious and the comic, and the style is dazzling. A modern version of A Midsummer Night's Dream that never exaggerates its jokes or its sources, Love in Idleness is the ultimate novel to take on vacation. It will make you fall in love with it, just like the "little western flower" used by Oberon. Betty, the mother-in-law from hell, is a creation of genius.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
first-rate comedy, worthy of PG Wodehouse,
This review is from: Love in Idleness (Hardcover)
I bought this as a Christmas present for my partner, and thought I'd just read a chapter first. I then had to lock myself away to read the rest. I can't see how anyone could dislike such a charming novel (except those envious of Craig's prodigious talent). Yes, the characters are all middle-class Americans and Brits - but aren't they in most fiction? That doesn't make them smug, as someone has claimed - in fact, at several points I wanted to kick Polly, the self-sacrificing wife and mother, in the pants for being so depressed, or did until the real reasons for it were revealed.As other reviewers have said, the novel is a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the rude mechanicals left out (a pity - I was looking forward to some extra comedy there). Apart from switching the sex of all Shakespeare's characters (it is the women who pursue the men, for instance)its real touch of brilliance lies in making the three children, bored silly by holidaying in Tuscany, into the fairies. The clash between the children's world and the adults is beautifully described, but underneath it the novel asks questions about the imagination and its freedom to upset daily life, and about the choices people make when in love that are serious and worth asking. I didn't think British writers wrote novels as satisfying and intelligently witty as this any more.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
outstanding romantic comedy,
This review is from: Love in Idleness (Hardcover)
It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a novel as much as I did this one. It takes a simple idea - the holiday from hell, shared with family and friends - and gives it a fresh twist in modelling it on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. As a result, what at first seems to be no more than a light-hearted comedy of manners deepens into an exploration of the hazy territory between love and the imagination. The really inspired part is that the three children in the novel (Bron, Tania and Robbie) play the part of the fairies, causing the adults in their lives to fall in love with each other. The characters are all sharply defined, and the landscape around Cortona vividly evoked. An intelligent, playful and sympathetic novel it should charm many other readers besides this one.
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