Pastures Nouveaux - Hardcover

Holden, Wendy

3.26

1,764 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747272522 ISBN 13: 9780747272526

Publisher: Headline, 2001

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Artist Rosie dreams of a peaceful country cottage. Her ambitious journalist boyfriend Mark, meanwhile, is aiming for a big piece of Islington. A house, in fact, like rampantly nouveau riche Samantha's, a has-been film star determined to become a country house chatelaine, despite the opposition of London-loving husband Guy. But circumstances dramatically change: Rosie gets her romantic cottage, while social-climbing Samantha becomes lady of the biggest manor she can find. Yet village life is anything but predictable. A farmer fatale threatens to ruin Rosie's relationship, while Samantha's ramraid on rural high society runs into problems. In the meantime, a fantastically nosy postman, a ferret-racing former Bond girl, a ghost with a knife in its back and a handsome but hermit-like rock star conspire to ensure that life - and especially love - is never the same again.

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Review:

Country life doesn't prove quite so simple for the sophisticated city folk in Pastures Nouveaux, best-selling author Wendy Holden's hilarious "comedy of country manors". Although some of the rural inhabitants are poor as church mice, the majority are not and all pursue the same recreational activities (money and sex) as their urban cousins.

The belle of the country set is Rosie, a freelance illustrator, who (originally) is not desperately seeking a man, marriage or babies. In fact, natural beauty Rosie doesn't seem to have a problem with men at all. Although she has a partner (Mark is an arrogant journalist whose work involves dishing the dirt on the famous), he is quite obviously unsuitable for such a nice girl. It doesn't take long (page two) before Rosie thinks there must be more to life. So when Mark is given his own column about, wait for it, the travails of sophisticated city folk who move to the hilariously simple "country", she is soon romping with a very mixed set from the nouveaux-riches Samantha and Guy to a farmer fatale and a mysterious millionaire.

Thanks to her previous jobs on national newspapers and up-market glossies, Holden slickly draws her caricatures of urban types from the single-minded financiers, for whom extra-marital sex is a hobby, to their stick-insect, interior design-obsessed wives to vacuous, celebrity-sniffing media types. Champagne D'Vyne, Holden's posh-totty socialite and star of previous tales, even makes a cameo appearance (as herself, nach). If you are looking for a light read, nouvelle literature that won't stretch you too much, read on! --Carey Green

Review:

'Pacy pastiche of city dwellers "gone country"...packed with puns... Holden has produced an entertaining novel, bursting with a large cast of Diblyesque characters, which will no doubt delight fans of her two previous books' Daily Mail

'Clever, naughty and basically affectionate and good-natured.... a comic romp engineered with aplomb and dash... will have fans glued' Sunday Times

'A very modern romantic comedy... her cultural references are spot-on... an amusing romp through village life' Mail On Sunday

'Clever, naughty and basically affectionate and good-natured.... a comic romp engineered with aplomb and dash... will have fans glued' Sunday Times

'A very modern romantic comedy... her cultural references are spot-on... an amusing romp through village life' Mail On Sunday

'On days of gloom Wendy Holden's novels should be handed round like aspirin. Her new book, Pastures Nouveaux, is guaranteed to bring a smile even to the baddest of moods... Discover the hills are alive with the sound of high jinks in this laugh-a-minute romp' B magazine

'A light-hearted rustic romp' Mirror

'A hilarious look at townies who move to the country' Mirror

'A pun-packed romp' Eve

'Very funny' Heat

'A hilariously outrageous romp that takes the gloss off those countryside daydreams' Cosmopolitan

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