The Little Ottleys

This brand of humor is just up my alley. If I have any complaints, it’s that the third book drags a little, and I wish there was more continuity between them. Where do Hyacinth and Vincy disappear to?!

Oscar Wilde was a very great friend of Ada Leverson, went to all her parties and promoted her as the wittiest woman in London and the best writer in England. Presumably he did this out of friendship, because its hard to see what there is in the Little Ottleys that would lead anyone to think there was any real merit in this book.

Like Wilde and, later, Noel Coward, Leverson was all about slyly-observed little comedies of the peccadillos of the upper middle classes. With a good writer this sort of subject can be very witty - the Importance of Being Earnest for example - but in the hands of a hack, like Leverson, its just plain silly and uninteresting. There is no depth to the characters so that the reader really doesn't care who is having show more an affair with whom if you don't care, then the book is a total time waster.

I can imagine this might have been successful as a women's magazine story serialized over half a dozen issues. Or perhaps, spiced up and with a sexified cover (can you have rock-star long hair and rippling muscles on a suit that works in the city a la Harlequin romances?)

It wasn't an awful book, a bit depressing maybe, but mainly it was too insubstantial and for me at least, its only plus point was the beautifully-designed cover. show less

Started to read Love's Shadow but couldn't get interested