This book highlights very different situations for Jane; her life in Norbury with her narrow-minded, judgemental Aunt, a grimey, freezing flat in London filled with beautiful gowns and jewels to a short lived beautiful flat in Mayfair full of forgotten property of past mistresses.

Staying with the period theme, but stepping away from The Ultimate Book List, A Vision of Loveliness takes place in 1960’s London and follows a social climbing Jane James as she gets her first foot hole into the life she so desperately wants through Suzie, a young girl about time whom she looks strikingly similar to. A Vision Of Loveliness is the fourth episode in The Read - a series of creative performance readings of iconic British novels. Aided by his imaginary friend David, James wreaks havoc on all his mother's effort to cultivate a conventional family life. In no time, she is a polished, preening 1950s Wag-equivalent (or, as some might more indelicately put it, a high-class tart). Psalm 96:11-12 “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof.

I would have given it five stars but the ending felt a bit rushed which is a shame as it was a delightful read. Women, it seems, cannot allow even the smallest uncalculating kindness: they are envious and selfish, loathing and loathsome. A Vision of Loveliness is a novel grounded in the grubby glamour of the 1960s, but it speaks sharply to the societal, financial and aesthetic pressures of being a woman today.

Just follow this simple, practical advice and you, too, can evolve into a charming and attractive woman. The mirrored room was packed with what looked like hundreds of women straightening seams, fixing straps, re-gluing eyelashes – like the emergency ward in a dolls’ hospital. Suzy takes Jane under her wing, and Jane becomes Janey, a near carbon-copy of her new best friend and a delighted adventurer in an easy, sleazy, sixties West-End world of part-time modelling and full-time man-trapping. The period detail is enthralling and it makes for compelling reading, but in the end I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. But I guess the story isn’t really about that, it’s about Jane and how she got to that point, how she “climbed” that social ladder and used the people around her to get exactly what she wants.

But add them together and they can make the difference between rich and poor, married of single, happy ever after and a miserable broken home. Loved the 1960s setting and the very different view of women, along with the characters ability to manipulate men for gain. In fact I felt I rushed reading the end rather, not because it was un-put-downable, but because I wanted to move on to something else, which was a shame. Honking geese in a nearby field echoed across the graceful curves of the river as others bobbed in the water.

This year those damaging blights missed our area, leaving us blessed beyond measure with vibrant colors, seeming as if each leaf has its own internal glowing light. No access along the top of the dale beyond a corner formed by the wall and obvious new fence bounding the 3rd major gully east of Plum Buttress. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. A darkly comic novel that reveals the seedy underbelly of London in the 1960s, rich with period detail, we follow a young woman, Jane ‘Janey’ James’ rise through the social ranks of her peculiar world. Jane James knows that she must have been born to better things than a dingy bedroom in her Aunt Doreen’s house in Norbury and evenings spent eating gala pie and Heinz tinned potato salad in their ‘sitting-cum-dining room’.Read the (slightly misleading/possibly more morally hopeful than the tale itself) background information/blurb from the book here. While glamour is prevalent to the story, none of the situations in the story are very appealing by the realistic descriptions Levene gives of the underbelly of 60’s London. Interesting story but the narrator perspective changed randomly in places which was somewhat unsettling. Wealthy men who want an evening out with a glamorous female; women who want independence and luxury and aren’t too picky about how they come by it – 'thank yous’ are, after all, the quickest way up the career ladder. It aims for satire, but with no sympathetic characters and an almost completely underdeveloped protagonist, it comes across as a nasty, bitter and cynical book with little morality and no moral to the story.