Crimson Hardcover – January 1, 1992
by Shirley Conran
 
Elinor, a legendary novelist, is on her deathbed and must decide to whom she will leave her fortune. Which, if any, of her three granddaughters will inherit? Beautiful Annabel, Miranda, the brilliant businesswoman, or Clare, the film producer’s wife with a social conscience?
 
From Publishers Weekly
As she did in Lace and Savages , Conran here spins a dramatic story tracing the lives of several women, here the members of the O'Dare family. Serving as a nurse in WW I, Elinor Dove meets and marries charming Billy O'Dare, whose continuing cruelty both shames and arouses her. Borrowing from the life of Colette, Conran gives manipulative, feckless Billy the inspiration of locking Elinor in a room to force her to write a novel. To no reader's surprise, Elinor becomes wildly successful, rich and famous. She also raises three gorgeous granddaughters on whom she bestows all the material advantages she once lacked. After Billy's drunken death, she passes control of her money to family friend Adam Grant. When Elinor falls ill, family rifts develop, marriages crumble, businesses and fortunes are undermined--and Adam is pulling the strings, since Elinor has neglected to instill in her granddaughters faith in their ability to take care of themselves. Though this rags-to-riches tale, set in London, Los Angeles, New York and the south of France, has the requisite touches of glamour and glitz, it is never truly compelling. Moreover, readers may be distanced by the female characters' overwhelming passivity. 200,000 first printing; first serial to Cosmopolitan; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A wealthy romance writer, her three English granddaughters, and the dastardly lawyer who attempts to destroy them all are featured in Conran's new two-generation saga--as businesslike and unsuspenseful as Lace (1982), and as destined for mega-promotion. Elinor O'Dare suffers the disadvantage of having grown up in America, the daughter of a brutish father and his submissive wife, but she manages to make something of herself nevertheless as a WW I Red Cross nurse, the steadfast wife of an upper-class English layabout, and, finally, one of the world's most successful romance writers. Charged with raising her three granddaughters after the death of her only son, old-fashioned O'Dare leans on attorney and family friend Joe Grant for advice and emotional support. When Joe dies his son, Adam, takes over Elinor's financial affairs, and so the O'Dare clan's tragic fate is practically sealed. As Conran reveals much too early in this lengthy yarn, handsome, coldhearted Adam is a compulsive gambler with steadily mounting debts. Thus it comes as no surprise to anyone but the four O'Dare women (the granddaughters include Clare, the judgmental prude; Annabel, the beautiful airhead; and Miranda, the feisty businesswoman) that Adam soon has his hand in the till. As the O'Dares marry, separate, and reunite with an assortment of virtually interchangeable men, they blithely ignore Adam's gambling addiction--but the discovery that he's bisexual serves to remove the veil of idealism from their eyes. Adam is booted out of Miranda's and Annabel's beds; Elinor is delivered from a prison-like nursing home; and the O'Dares are rescued from--horrors!--life with only a minimal financial cushion. For their own money, readers get: the Cannes Film Festival, a palace in southern France, the New York modeling scene, swinging- Sixties London, Europe during WW I, much discussion of love and the importance of female orgasm, and an avalanche of detail on how trust funds operate. Conran should do well, as always. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
 
3.1