Wilson, A. N

New York. 1984. Viking Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket That Sports Some Internal Water Marking. Remainder Stamps On Bottom Edge. 0670620076. 233 pages. hardcover. Cover art & Design by Jack Ribik. keywords: Literature England . FROM THE PUBLISHER - With the delicious elegance and lacerating wit that took America by storm at the publication of his last novel, WISE VIRGIN, A. N. Wilson here weaves a complex and hilarious tale of a sex scandal that reaches to the very heights of the British government. At its center is a loveable but dim-witted prostitute with the improbable name of Bernadette, one of whose clients - whom she entertains with the aid of a schoolboy's uniform and a teacher ruler - is a red-faced man of unusual sexual tastes who happens (unbeknownst to Bernadette) to be Derek Blore, a cabinet member hot for the summit. When her pimp arranges for her to marry a defecting Russian dancer, Bernadette doesn't realize this chaste could have anything to do with Blore; nor does Blore know that his business with the obliging Bernadette has come to anyone's attention - or that his otherwise irreproachable wife, Priscilla, is having a steamy but sane affair with a journalist with an insatiable appetite for a good story. And none of the four can see that their world of political salons, country house weekends, shabby genteel brothels, and Fleet Street gossip is about to be engulfed in a comic cataclysm that will change all their lives. These characters, and a dozen more, play out their lurid and ludicrous destiny before a backdrop of contemporary London that is almost Dickensian in its richness, but the balance struck between light and dark comedy is distinctly Wilson's own. Politics, sex, romantic love, greed, and revenge are transfigured here by irony - and the result is impure delight. inventory #4599 ISBN: 0670620076.