Scruples: a Novel

Judith Krantz captures your attention from the first sentence and you are hooked. It is a well written novel with a first class intriguing story. Your mind crawls into the lives of her characters and you stay there to see the end. It is a great read. If only I had written it...

Spoiler alert!! Scruples is the story of Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini. It starts out with Billy, as she prefers to be called, asking her friend and employee Valentine O'Neill to create a dress for her for the Oscars. Her second husband, Vito Orsini, has a movie in the running for Best Picture. We then learn about Billy, her life as a fat outsider in Boston. Her transformation to slenderness and beauty in Paris. Her marriage to the powerful and rich Ellis Ikehorn and then producer Vito Orsini. On the way we also learn about Valentine O'neill, the french designer of women's clothing. Spider Elliot, the quintessential ladies man from California. Dolly Moon, the abundant actress Billy meets while on the set of Vito's film Mirrors and many more memorable, living characters. Judith Krantz has a way of taking the problems of the very rich and making the reader feel as if he or she can empathize. Krantz has some pretty powerful love scenes in all her books and this one is no exception. I enjoy this book. I love the various locations and the feel that you are getting inside gossip on famous people even though you aren't really. The characters feel so real that it's almost like I know Billy Orsini and Dolly Moon and I could run over to their house for a cup of coffee.

I don't usually read romance novels - they're all patently predictable and unbelievable and, in most cases, horribly written. My girlfriend read Scruples during the summer that we were both 15, and she made me read it, which I did in one long, hot day, stretched out in a hammock in my backyard. The writing is quite intelligent, humorous, touching, and diverse - Judith Krantz, I quickly learned, likes to educate the reader at odd, unsuspected moments. Odd little tidbits - such as South Carolina produces more fashion models than any other state, and that panties from Juel Park go for $200.00 a paid (or did in 1976). The sex was rather yummy, and kind of ahead of its time (read the glory hole sequence). Yeah, I read it, and yeah, I enjoyed it, and yeah, I read her other books as well. I must admit, this one was my favorite. I still have a copy, and i still re-read it from time to time. Hey, sometimes you just have to appreciate the classics.

Judith Krantz was not the first great writer of women's fiction: Mary McCarthy, Taylor Caldwell, Grace Metallus and Jacqueline Susann came before her. Yet, certainly, Krantz gave birth to the women's fiction industry as it exists today. Susan Issacs, Olivia Goldsmith, Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Mary Higgins Clark are just some of those who follow the path blazed by Judith Krantz. A few of these Great Dames may have equalled Ms. Krantz, but none of them has yet exceeded her success.SCRUPLES is the first modern novel written in that lively style which so many others have tried to emulate. As always with Ms. Krantz, SCRUPLES has several complicated, entwined plotlines involving the half-dozen or so leading characters. As always with Ms. Krantz, these characters each are complex, convincing and endearing. Her writing here, as it would prove to be ever after, is easy to read and quick-paced. Where Judith Krantz stands alone among the ladies is in the details. After a reader has finished one of her books, that reader will have had an education in whatever topics the book covers. In SCRUPLES, the reader will learn all about high-end retailing and fashion design, about growing up in Paris, about the lifestyle of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. In fact, Judith Krantz probably solidified the entire fascination with that kind of lifestyle, spawning television series, magazines and, yes, other novels. In reading Ms. Krantz's work, one admires the gowns, tastes the treats, smells the perfume, touches the sculptures. No other author consistently claims this same effect.Many years after its first issue, SCRUPLES remains as fresh as the day it was published. Not many works can boast of this achievement, and those that do are known as "classics." This freshness, too, must be unique among the women's books. The similar efforts of other authors quickly become dated if they are not read within the first couple of years after they hit the shops. Judith Krantz deserves greater appreciation than she has received from her legion of fans. An entire branch of the publishing industry has evolved out of second-rate authors who attempt to imitate her style with little success, yet acknowledgement of Krantz's impact has been inexcusably slow in coming. Judith Krantz clearly set out to write a big, glitzy novel, a fun read. And she did. Did she ever! Very simply, Judith Krantz is the best of the best.

Judith Krantz is not a writer you read for intellectual stimulation or spiritual enlightenment. But she is still one of the most entertaining mass-market novelists around, especially for women. All of her books feature strong, attractive (on the inside as well as the outside) yet believable women; and the plots are the stuff of modern age fairy tales. Scruples is her first novel, the one that put her on the map and was a smash hit in the late '70s. The heroine, Billy Winthrop Ikehorn (two other surnames follow eventually), may be the least likeable of all her heroines, yet is the most believable perhaps because she is flawed. The plot and settings feel slightly dated, but don't really distract from the pure mindless enjoyment of a "smashing read". One of the big attractions of the Krantz novels are the well-researched and absorbing "inside details" of the settings - of the Beverly Hills retail world, the movie industry and people of a certain class in Paris in the case of Scruples. If you read this book and like it, you'll want to grab all her books; if you hate it, don't bother with any others. I have been buying every single one of her books since Scruples up to her latest, Spring Collection, and hope she continues. They are great for reading in bed or in a hot tub.