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Notting Hell (Hardcover)

by Rachel Johnson (Author) "I don't know what woke me up - I drank no alcohol last night, I observed the carb curfew, I had only one espresso during..." (more)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Fig Tree (31 Aug 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0670915750
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670915750
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 368,310 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Meet Mimi (Fleming at school/surgery/the butcher's, Mimi Malone at work/dinner parties with attractive men!) Mimi may 'have it all', she has the house, the children, the part-time vanity job, the skinny jeans, and the feng shui guru, but life chez Fleming it's not as cushy as she'd like (husband Ralph prefers the trout stream in Wiltshire to the fast lane of W11). And when Mimi meets Si, the new billionaire on the block, at a sushi party, she soon faces a choice of keeping up, or keeping it real...Then there's her best friend Clare, neatfreak garden designer, deep in bio-panic about her childlessness with eco-architect husband, Gideon.Clare monitors all illicit activity in the private West London compound - from light adultery to heavy building work - and she is watching Mimi as spring turns to summer, and summer to winter...A wicked comedy of manners filleting life on a "Notting Hill" communal garden, where lucky residents fall into one of only two social-economic groups: the haves - and the have-yachts...So, take your GBP3m key (it costs that much because if you lose it, you basically have to buy another house on the communal garden to replace it) and enter Lonsdale Gardens, meet the rest of the rich neighbours and see what really goes on behind that famous garden gate.


From the Inside Flap

A spot of extra-marital with a close neighbour is one thing.
We're all grown-ups here. But selling a rare-to-the-market mid-Victorian
house - not merely a house, but our children's ancestral family home - on a
communal garden, the sort of house that a banker would trample over his own
grandmother to spend his City bonus on is another thing entirely! It's...
wrong. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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First Sentence
I don't know what woke me up - I drank no alcohol last night, I observed the carb curfew, I had only one espresso during the day, plus I did a Pilates class and hours of gardening in the fresh air - but I'm definitely awake now. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Notting Hell
83% buy the item featured on this page:
Notting Hell 3.7 out of 5 stars (21)
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Wife in the North 3.5 out of 5 stars (31)
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The Mummy Diaries: Or How to Lose Your Husband, Children and Dog in Twelve Months
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The Mummy Diaries: Or How to Lose Your Husband, Children and Dog in Twelve Months 2.9 out of 5 stars (9)
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Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars chilling satire on yummy mummies, 9 Sep 2006
By A. Craig "Amanda Craig" (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
For those who wondered whether life in Notting Hill is really the way Richard Curtis portrayed it in his film, Rachel Johnson's novel is a withering risposte. Don't be deceived by the trappings of glossy magazine designer labels, the occasional Jilly Cooperish puns about sex and the general YOU magazine stuff about Yummy Mummies. This is a portrait of hell, as lived by the super-rich.
It goes without saying that most readers will not know this life, or feel remotely sympathetic towards any of the characters, so it may be best to view them as being as weird as Desperate Housewives or bankers in Manhattan. The story is told through the eyes of two fortyish wives living on "Lonsdale Gardens", whose pistachio-painted mansions all back onto one of the areas famous private gardens. Clare is the childless wife of a modern architect remarkably similar to Johnson's neighbour (as we know from her columns), John Paulson, and Mimi sounds rather like Johnson herself being an "impoverished" mother of three and freelance journalist who can afford her house only because her posh husband Ralph inherited it back when NH was full of poor Afro-Caribbeans. Now it's a life of "haves and have-yachts", in which interior decoration is carried out on an annual basis and if one Mummy gets a swimming pool in her basement, everyone else must get one too.
The plot is pretty simple. Mimi falls for billionaire new neighbour Si Kasparian and enjoys a brief adulterous affair with him until discovering he's also shagging the gorgeous teacher at Ponsonby Prep. Clare is unaware that her husband is trying it on with every woman but her, but falls for Mimi's husband - a man so stuffily Old Etonian that he prefers fly-fishing to conversation. In the space of a year, their friendship, neighbours, spouses and children go through a succession of feuds, rivalries, gossip and scandal all revolving around the "Garden of Eden" that is their back yard.

As you might expect from this clever, witty columnist the detail of their lives is more riveting than what they do with it. Being able to pop into your neighbours for a cup of pine nuts and some Italian 000 flour might sound like bliss but not only does it mean it's open season on adultery and scandal-mongering but everyone is in a frenzy of competitiveness. Your children must be either gifted or Special Needs; you need not just a Nanny but a housekeeper and a cleaner; you have your window-boxes feng shuied; you have incessant food intolerances that means you only eat £80 joints of lamb and never allow your children to touch sugar....it goes on and on. Hideously funny and weirdly compelling, they are exactly the kind we are supposed to admire and emulate, according to the media. The author knows them inside-out, and like Balzac is more than half seduced by them even as she eviscerates their idiotic routines, mindless consumption, holier-than-thou eco-friendliness (involving having three cars and your own Lear jet). Johnson's Mimi is forced to sell up and move to the country for a "simple" life of the kind Marie Antoinette no doubt envisaged when dressing as a shepherdess. Notting Hell is much nastier than it may appear beneath the oleaginous descriptions of lovely Johnny Boden, Kate Moss, Emma Freud etc., and should be distributed by the Labour Party to remind us all of just what, precisely, David Cameron really stands for.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars notting hell, 26 Sep 2006
By Jill Shaw (London) - See all my reviews
Rachel Johnson's book Notting Hell is a very funny, amusing, approaching brilliant at times, look at life in W11. Her acute observations of communal garden living and take on life of what is viewed as the norm -left me wishing that more of the second part of the book was like the first sixty pages. A very easy read and very enjoyable.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars What a surprise!, 20 Feb 2007
This review is from: Notting Hell (Paperback)
I must say I approached this novel with a certain amount of trepidation as I knew Rachel Johnson from her newspaper columns, and I was emphatically not a fan. They always seemed to want to show off - often about really mundane things , so one felt embarrassed for the author.
But the novel seems to be made of sterner stuff! I was totally surprised that not only was it not as feckless and show-offy as I had feared, it was really accomplished. The point of view technique of how the two narrators see each other is brilliantly executed and manages to move the action along as well as being rather hilarious. I also liked the way the time-line was skilfully used to allow for flash-backs, filling in gaps in the narrative and thereby changing the pace of the plot. A few hiccups remain -one really doesn't want to read the expression "A-listers" in a novel, and the animal attraction of Mimi to billionaire Si sounds a bit ropey. Still - I was massively impressed how Rachel Johnson manages to write a novel which is funny, entertaining , thoroughly modern and still retains elements of a now sadly nostalgic seeming English wholesomeness and wistfulness.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Tied up in Notts
I'm really not too sure what to make of this. It's not your usual tired chick lit (haphazard heroine, on the look out for a man who does all manner of amusingly endearing things... Read more
Published 14 months ago by S.M. Gidley

1.0 out of 5 stars A hellish read
Johnson's stated aim is to mock the super-rich, super-elite West London social sect she belongs to. Instead, with every celebrity name check and description of their absurdly... Read more
Published 16 months ago by James Lyons

2.0 out of 5 stars Thought I was going to love it, but it let me down!
I loved the beginning and middle of this book - it's a sharp, accurate and satisfying satire about the 'haves and the have yachts' of London's most exclusive district. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2007 by Cando

1.0 out of 5 stars A big disappointment...
Sorry guys, I really wanted to like this book and best thing about it actually is the title, which I found great. Read more
Published on 17 Sep 2007 by T. Ljubic-Brown

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible...
I cannot begin to describe how ghastly this book is - words genuinely fail me. Rachel Johnson is a freelance writer/housewife who lives in a large house in Notting Hill with... Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2007 by Ingaborga

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
What a joy. What a giggle. Rachel Johnson had me totally hooked on her rolicking tale of West London Yummy Mummies, whilst simultaneously stiring my bread sauce over Xmas; I... Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2007 by G. Fordham

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a Notting Hell
I share the previous reviewer's reticence about this book. My initial condition was short lived. It is easy to read and witty, with fantastic observations on the life and lives... Read more
Published on 12 Mar 2007 by Lucy Gow

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious
Great fun! Brave lady to write like this about her own neighbours and friends. I laughed out load at various parts... Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2007 by The Hon Laura Plumptre

1.0 out of 5 stars Rubbish from the first word
This book is filled with so many typos and spelling errors that I am amazed it was even published. The story line is not at all original, the author even rides the anti-american... Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2007 by T T

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining
I laughed aloud several times in the first 50 pages or so, as Rachel Johnson hilariously and entertainingly ticks off one after another of the characteristics and life-styles of... Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2007 by Ralph Blumenau

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