Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2008
592 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set during the boom-and-bust years of the 1980s, An Absolute Scandal follows the lives of a group of people drawn together by their mutual monetary woes when the great financial institution Lloyd's undergoes a devastating downturn. For Nigel Cowper, this means the destruction of his family business; his wife, Lucinda, is willing to do everything she can to help him—except give up her irresistible lover. The powerful, charismatic banker Simon Beaumont and his wife, a highly successful advertising executive, lose everything they worked so hard to acquire; but the ultimate tragedy is something that neither one could have anticipated. The well-to-do are not the only ones suffering: a self-sufficient widow is suddenly deep in debt; a single mother struggles to maintain a comfortable home for her children; and a schoolmaster and his frustrated wife find that financial problems deepen the cracks in their troubled marriage.
As their lives begin a downward spiral, these characters intersect in ways they never saw coming. Written in what has become her signature style of both wit and candor, Penny Vincenzi draws back the curtain and offers an inside view of the greed and social power plays that occur behind the closed doors of upper-crust society . . . where money isn’t everything. Sometimes, it’s the only thing.
"The general stiff-upper-lipped attitude may sound tinny to American ears.... but this chickensian drama delivers all the goods required for a sizzling summer read." - Publishers Weekly.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Penny Vincenzi was one of the UK’s best-loved and most popular authors. Since her first novel, Old Sins, was published in 1989, she wrote fourteen bestselling novels.
Her first 'proper' job was at the Harrods Library, aged sixteen, after which she went to secretarial college. She joined the Mirror and later became a journalist, writing for The Times, the Daily Mail and Cosmopolitan among many others, before turning to fiction. At the time of her death in 2018, over seven million copies of Penny's books had been sold worldwide and she is universally held to be the 'doyenne of the modern blockbuster' (Glamour). She has four daughters, and divided her time between London and Gower, South Wales, until her death in February 2018 aged 78.
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