The Bulgari Connection - Softcover

A fast-moving, elegant novel set in contemporary London in the glittering world of charity auctions, big business, high art, and more than enough money to spare.

The Bulgari Connection finds Fay Weldon on familiar ground, chronicling the pains and pleasures of the battle of the sexes, in this enjoyably funny novel. Set in glamorous contemporary London, Weldon's novel begins with the proverbial love triangle. Wealthy, dissatisfied self-made businessman Barley Salt leaves his frumpy wife Grace for the glamorous TV presenter Doris Dubois. Grace concedes that her husband "has aged better than I have", and that Doris "is 23 years younger than I am. She is slimmer than I am, and more clever". Grace tries but fails to run Doris over, and for her pains is sentenced to three years in jail. However, when she meets the struggling young artist Walter Wells, with his preference for "the blown rose not the bud", Grace literally has a new lease of life. As her life takes on new meaning, Barley and Doris start to lose control of their own self-centred lives.

The Bulgari Connection is a fast-moving, readable novel of greed, middle-aged deceit and love, but feels like it was written in the 1980s, not the early 21st century. Weldon's attempts at a very English version of magic realism evoke strong echoes of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (as the novel itself admits). This is effortless Weldon, but many of her fans will feel that it is marking time rather than breaking new ground. --Jerry Brotton