Pride and Avarice

This is my first Nicholas Coleridge novel and I'm pleased enough to reserve a couple of his earlier works from the library. However, the novel is frustrating in its simplistic tone and ideas. About half way through I started getting edgy waiting for the comeuppance - or some arc, some transformation of someone. I had to put it down for this reason and return to it a few days later. Throughout, though, the good stay good and the bad unrelentingly bad. This made the book a mildly amusing summer fantasy read, with some charm, however. I did enjoy his natural, easy hand on the characters themselves. The straightforward descriptive sentences lent a nice, pleasant humour to the book and I found I wanted to keep spending time even with people I didn't (and wasn't meant to) like. Which is why I did keep thinking about the story and the people even when I took a break from reading. The end was mildly disappointing. It felt two abrupt in length, though everything got properly resolved. This happened in the last twenty or so pages of a nearly five hundred page book. I think more effort could have been put in this area. Four stars because my walk-away feeling was of pleasant enjoyment.

As a reader of much modern British fiction, I hadn't come across Mr. Coleridge and picked this book up at random. However, I found it to be a great read, very absorbing and a wonderfully insightful picture of England today. As a story of a sophisticated PR man and the "upstart" grocery man who becomes his neighbor, the book presents many opportunities for character development as each one has a wife, four children and many friends. Mr. Coleridge does a brilliant job of juggling the many plot developments, while keeping each character wholly believable. Over the book's dozen or so years, each one develops and interacts in ways that are not predictable and keep the reader glued to the page. Mr. Coleridge also does a terrific job with the various big scenes, making them come alive in variously funny, poignant and dramatic ways. I look forward to reading his other books and highly recommend this one. p.s. The style is a cross between Penny Vincenzi [but not as wordy] and Katie Fforde [but not as light and predictable, but equally funny in places].

but a very good read, all the same. Nicholas Coleridge is a British writer who has been "discovered" in the US. This novel, "Pride and Avarice" was published in the UK last year under the title "Deadly Sins". I've read all three of his previous novels, and have found them to be very good takes at the British social mores. I reviewed "A Much Married Man", giving it five stars. "Pride and Avarice" is good, not great, story of two men - both wealthy - at great odds with each other. Miles Straker, a British PR genius - resents his new neighbor, Ross Clegg, a self-made millionaire, who moves into Straker's sphere of influence. Straker tries to destroy Clegg, and nearly does. It's a story that's been told a thousand times before. Coleridge does a good job at knowing the ins and outs of British public and private life, but the characters, both primary and supporting, come off as somewhat "flat". The story is better than the characterization, but that's okay, the story holds its own. The novel is enjoyable. I normally don't comment on the price of books, but I am impressed here that "Pride and Avarice" is priced at $26.00, retail. With book prices edging higher and higher, this book is priced quite nicely.