KEY POINTS:
As if the title wasn't enough to pique my interest, Sophie Gee's novel about intrigue, sex and scandal in 1711 was a thrilling read from start to finish that left me wanting more.
In among Jacobite plots to assassinate the queen and bring back a Catholic king, fears of popery and the heyday of the slave trade, the popular set of London are indulging themselves in the fancies and frivolities of masquerade balls, steamy affairs and the marriage market.
With celebrated poet Alexander Pope watching with a keen eye for detail (a real-life character woven into the world adeptly), the beautiful Arabella Fermor is seduced by the worldly Lord Robert Petre, the seventh baron of Ingatestone, and may risk everything in the pursuit of temptation. Meanwhile, Petre himself is risking plenty to be involved in the excitement of a Jacobite uprising, knowing that he will be hanged for his troubles if he is ever discovered.
The re-imagined story behind Pope's brilliant satire poem, The Rape of the Lock, unfolds in Gee's story with warmth and wit - plus a liberal sprinkling of mystery and sex, which can never really harm a book, in my opinion.
Whisked away in the sparkling repartee of the aristocrats, I found myself wishing for the book to go on much longer than it did.
An English professor at Princeton, Gee pens a satisfying mix of social history and tradition alongside a timeless tale of lust. In Pope, the author finds a way of exploring the social norms and rules that abound in this society _ the crippled poet is an outsider, and it is through his experience that the reader learns what is considered acceptable, and what occurs beneath the surface of everyday life.
A sparkling first novel from Gee that can be devoured in a day, or savoured for a week.
*Random House, $36.99
- Sunday Extra, HoS
