The Perfect Happiness - reviews

Angelica is a woman who has it all: an attractive French husband, a career as a best-selling children’s author and loads of money but Olivier, the husband, works in the Cit and the encroaching credit crisis is occupying him and making him neglectful.  So, when she meets a handsome South African, Jack, at a dinner party, she is ripe for the picking. 

Santa Montefiore is a marvel at descriptive writing and the two milieus she establishes, the grand drawing rooms of rich London filled with designer-clad women and the lush South African veldt, have you drooling.  She’s very sympathetic to her characters, too:  Angelica is never praised for what she is doing but neither is she condemned.  “Have you ever been tempted?” asks the cover of the book.  Well, of course. 

This book is really a description of a midlife crisis of a kind only the really lucky have: everything is so perfect that surely there must be something more? Angelica is, ultimately, brought up short by the potential repercussions of her actions and nor, rather bleakly, are the lovers given a happy ending.  It doesn’t happen in life and neither, in this case, in art.

The most intriguing character is Anna, Jack’s wife, a near-saintly figure who knows exactly what is going on but makes no attempt to interfere because she and Jack do not possess one another.  This is a tale of middle-aged angst, yearning and longing and the fact that we must all, ultimately, accept real life.

Sunday Express May 2nd 2010