With a theme of ‘trash’ for this month’s book club there was only one person I was going to turn to: Jilly Cooper and her 1976 heroine, Harriet.
Harriet – the blurb
Shy, dreamy, and incurably romantic, Harriet Poole was shattered when her brief affair with Simon Villiers, Oxford’s leading playboy undergraduate, ended abruptly, leaving her penniless, alone and pregnant. Still hopelessly in love with Simon, she took baby William and buried herself in deepest Yorkshire as nanny to the children of Cory Erskine, a somewhat eccentric scriptwriter.
Local tongues were just beginning to wag when a whole host of visitors began to arrive to disrupt Harriet’s peaceful routine: first Cory’s estranged wife Noel, hellbent on winning Cory back, then Cory’s glamorous brother Kit, whose old affair with Noel didn’t stop him making passes at Harriet, and finally, of all people, Simon…
Where for art thou Rupert?
Jilly Cooper is a legend in my eyes with her Rutshire Chronicles being some of my favorite ever reads. Coming off the back of a very weighty read Harriet, a 280 page standalone romance, was truly a sight for sore eyes. Sure there was no Rupert Campbell Black (I’ve gone off him anyhow) instead there was troubled writer Cory, his bitchy estranged wife Noel and single parent Harriet the hopeless romantic. You knew what was going to happen from the get go yet it didn’t matter. Close the curtains, get the fire going and settle in for the duration.
Foundation stones
The book was first published in the 70s and now, some 40 odd years later, it shows. Certain cultural references certainly wouldn’t be accepted by an editor and Harriet is very much the scarlett woman having had a baby out of wedlock. It was also strange to read about a hunt meeting taking place. I did find Harriet a touch too weak and Cory a touch too unlikeable. Cooper walks the line perfectly in the Rutshire Chronicles published nearly 10 years later and you can tell when you read Harriet. The foundation stones are there, (the animals especially the horses) but they are not quite the finished article. I nevertheless enjoyed the book and finished it in two days. For those in need of being ‘kissed so ferociously you almost lose consciousness’, it’s just the tonic.
