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 story begins with the proverbial love triangle. Wealthy, dissatisfied, self-made businessman Barley Salt leaves his frumpy wife, Grace, for the glamorous TV host 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-centered lives.

The Bulgari Connection is a fast-moving, highly readable novel of greed, middle-aged deceit, and love, but feels like it was written in the 1980s, not the early 21st century. This is effortless Weldon, although many of her fans will feel that it is marking time rather than breaking new ground. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk


From Booklist
Weldon is at her wicked best in this crisp, hilarious page-turner about ambition and love. Barley Salt (a millionaire, not a condiment) is one of those silver-haired, square-jawed gentlemen born to wear expensive suits, get rich, and fall for younger women, but he seriously miscalculated when he took up with Doris Dubois. Host of a hip but fatuous TV arts program, Doris is a delectably evil femme fatale, and Barley's first wife, Grace, was right to try to run her over. Just out of prison, Grace runs into the glamorous couple at a charity function where a portrait of the hostess wearing a fabulous Bulgari necklace that Doris covets is auctioned off. The young and handsome painter falls instantly in love with the much older ex-con, and soon Grace grows more lithe and youthful while Walter thickens up and slows down. Meanwhile, Doris and Barley are finally seeing each other clearly, to their mutual dismay. Weldon's diabolically clever satire of greed, fashion, sex, and age is smart entertainment of the highest order. In a curious twist, it turns out that Weldon accepted money from Bulgari for product placement. Donna Seaman
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Book Description
The eagerly awaited publication of The Bulgari Connection created a whirl of controversy when a front-page New York Times article revealed that Weldon received an undisclosed sum of money from the famous Italian jeweler for a prominent place in her latest novel. The debate about the legitimacy of commercially sponsored literature has been heating up ever since, polarizing such literary luminaries as Rick Moody and J. G. Ballard, Michael Chabon and Jeanette Winterson, into respectively opposing camps. The novel itself, however, has been gaining much praise, since "Weldon is at her wicked best in this crisp, hilarious page-turner about ambition and love" (Booklist). Once again the acclaimed British author of Rhode Island Blues and Big Girls Don't Cry draws us into an unmistakably wild, rollicking tale full of her trademark satirical wit and sharp observation. Grace McNab Salt is the recently divorced wife of the millionaire Barley Salt, who has married Doris Dubois, the sexy, young host of TV's Artsworld Extra. The novel opens with Grace emerging from jail where she was sent for trying to run Doris over with her Jaguar in a supermarket parking lot in an act of revenge. All three attend a London charity ball, and in typical Weldon fashion the meeting turns everyone's lives upside down. Weldon's world is one of relationships: torrid affairs, lovers' spite, and revenge. Full of clever women, breathless romance, insistent desires, and even a dose of the supernatural, The Bulgari Connection is a boisterously witty and stylish novel. "[A] piquant social comedy." -- Sherryl Connelly, The New York Daily News "Weldon's latest is a stylish tale of romance in London." -- Publishers Weekly "It is a classic Weldon creation: playful, sharp and funny." -- Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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