Product Description

Jane Austen meets Philip Roth in a sexy, sparkling debut novel reconstructing the real-life scandal that inspired Alexander Pope's famous poem The Rape of the Lock. London, 1711. The rich young offspring of the city's fashionable families fill their days with masquerade balls, opera engagements, and clandestine courtships. Leading the pursuit of pleasure are the beautiful Arabella Fermor, with her circle of beaus, and Robert Petre, seventh Baron of Ingatestone, a man-about-town with his choice of mistresses. Small, sickly, and almost penniless, Alexander Pope is peripheral by birth, yet his dazzling wit and ambition gain him unlikely entrance into high society. Privy to every nuance and drama, he is a brilliant and ruthless observer. As the forbidden passion between Arabella and Lord Petre deepens, fortunes change and reputations even livesare imperiled. Pope transforms their affair and its demise into a risqu poem, The Rape of the Lock, that catapults him to fame and fortune. A witty, provocative tale of intrigue, seduction, and betrayal, The Scandal of the Season captures a time when marriage was a market, sex was a temptation fraught with danger, and a costume could conceal a dandy or a murderer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1755658 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-10
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
Hunchbacked satirist poet Alexander Pope finds inspiration in the foibles of 18th-century London's young, rich and arrogant in Gee's shrewd debut, an erudite period piece filled with outrageous flirtation, social maneuvering and contests of wit. The low-born Pope is permitted entry to London's upper echelons after some of his poems gain a gilded readership, and his literary ambitions and adventures in the city with childhood friends Martha and Teresa Blount are offset by the passionate but clandestine romance between the beautiful Arabella Fermor (who happens to be related to the Blounts), and the haughty Lord Petre, whose involvement in a plot to assassinate the queen lands him in a tight spot. The stories intersect when Pope immortalizes the lovers' high-class intrigue in a scalding poem. The novel is sprinkled with literary cameos and jokes English lit majors will appreciate, while crackling verbal one-upmanship and crude double entendres should keep the hoi polloi turning pages. Gee's take on the Paris Hilton-like figures who pranced through London 300 years ago manages to be simultaneously tabloid bawdy and academy proper.
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From AudioFile
Cameron Stewarts crisp narration leads us into the social whirl of 1711 London and the world of Alexander Pope, a striving poet. His observations on society resulted in The Rape of the Lock, a poem that launched his literary success. Gees book is meticulously researched--from its details on the Catholic-Jacobite controversies to the historical personages of the time. While the writing reflects a period awash in banter and wit, the slowness of the story might frustrate some historical fiction lovers as much as it pleases others. Cameron Stewarts reading is successful except when he flies into a distracting falsetto as he delivers the dialogue of the female characters. S.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
England in the beginning of the eighteenth century was a time known for the wit of its intellectuals as well as the crudeness of daily life. The great men of the era attended to business in coffeehouses—nobles cheek by jowl with writers—trading jests and jibes, making and destroying reputations with impunity. In the London season of 1711, a hopeful Alexander Pope—visiting his painter friend Jervas—finds himself in the perfect position to observe the scandal that his genius would turn into "The Rape of the Lock." The cast of characters glitters with members of the British nobility and of the English literati, with the seduction of the virginal beauty Arabella Fermor by Lord Petre at the heart of the story. A touch of suspense comes from a Jacobin plot that targets the aging Queen Anne for replacement by the Stuart king in exile. True to the mores of the era and to the historical record, this agreeable and gossipy read will appeal to those who like their history with a touch of spice. Loughran, Ellen