The Scandal of the Season

I love reading historical fiction and this book is an absolute pleasure to read. If you enjoy reading novels by Philippa Gregory but also relish the comedy of manners found in Jane Austin storylines then you will love the style of writing that Sophie Gee creates. I am very much looking forward to her next book.

I read this book for my book club, and we all really enjoyed it. It didn't give us a ton to discuss, but it's definitely a fun read. I had a hard time putting it down!

In 18th century London, an aspiring young poet, Alexander Pope follows his childhood friends, sisters Martha and Teresa Blount to London for the "season", where he hopes to gain entree to the inner circles of society. The "in" people converse in what they think to be a witty and flirtatious style,in brief, sometimes acerbic sentences which allude to a person's background and breeding. One of the current leading lights of Society is Lord Petre who hails from an old Catholic family and whose financial support is being sought by a group of Jacobites who are planning to restore James Stuart to the throne after assassinating Queen Anne. At first I didn't find it easy to keep up with the story until I began to look at it as a dance, with the main characters tripping delicately around, using academically clever sentences while never saying exactly what they mean, with elegant phrases and then firing a shock into the reader with unexpectedly raunchy statements. In his now famous poem, The Rape of the Lock, Pope wrote the story of Lord Petre's romance with the beautiful Arabella (named Belinda in the poem), joining the romance with broad hints of a Jacobite plot, and eventually became the wealthiest satirist of his day.

This book enchanted me from the start. The depth of the author's research combined with her delightful writing style transport the reader to a beautifully rendered version of 18th century London. Her insights into human social and mating behavior are incisive and humorous. All in all a fabulous read. I eagerly await her next book.

OK, I will admit that I was an English major in college, but I think this novel will appeal to pretty much anyone who likes lively historical fiction that is smart, not sloppy. The sex scenes are as impressive as the scholarship in this book, which gets better and better as it nears the climax (pun intended). I would have liked an even denser texture of period detail, but there is quite a bit and the characters were more convincing than in many of these period stories. For book groups looking for something both racy and literary, here's your next book! Sophie Gee has reprinted the famous Pope poem at the end: after reading about the love affair that inspired the poem, I had a lot more fun reading it than I ever did in college.