The book I am reviewing is Penny Vincenzi's "An Absolute Scandal"
I first stumbled upon this book in the now defunct Border (RIP, I loved that shop and still mourn it's loss) and i picked this up a couple of times, but always got distracted by something, and so Penny Vincenzi and her books remained unexplored and unloved bu myself!!!
It wasn't until April 2010, when i purchased another one of Vincenzi's book, The Best of Times, it took me forever to read it and i wasn't too impressed, but nevertheless i decided to read a few more of her books to see if they were an improvement. After The Best of Times, i read a further 2 and I was blown away by how good they were and so i decided to read An Absolute Scandal...
An Absolute Scandal is long, at nearly 900 pages long, and to read this book you would need alot of free time, it took me nearly nearly 3 weeks to read it from start to finish, never has it taken me so long to read a book before, but alas I enjoyed it very much and don' regret a minute of it...
The book set in the 1980's and 1990's is based around the scandal of Lloyds of London Scandal and how it affected some of the "names". Now i had never heard of the scandal as it happened in 1988 which was the year i was born in (my birthday is just over 2 weeks away eeeeekkkkk).
The book focuses on 3 family's who are affected by the scandal, The Beaumont's, The Fielding's and The Cowper's. The story tells of who Lloyd's start demanding money from the "names" and how the sum increases yearly leading to the financial ruin of Lloyd's of London names. People who are extremely rich are forced into ruin, wrecking working and family relationships.
The book starts with a prologue, which is a very clever way of drawing the reader in, the prologue begins with a tragedy, a death of one of the main protagonists of the story but Vincenzi, does a very good job of keeping the deceased a secret.
The story is well written and easy to follow, it is told from the point of view of the main characters and Vincenzi does a good job of forging relationships between the characters, who at the beginning are total strangers living in different parts of the country. In addition to focusing on the Lloyd's scandal, there are also sub plots based around others people of the affected families, some of these are a little wishy washy and pointless however they all come together pretty well as the book heads into the conclusion...
As a reader I found i went through many emotions whilst reading this, happiness and sadness, there were also many laugh out loud moments.
Personally i really really enjoyed reading book, and I am going to say that it was probably one of the best books i have read all year. I loved it so much that I want to read it all over again
Since then i have Purchased the rest of Vincenzi's book and look forwarding to reading them.
I award this book a 4.5 out of 5
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