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Scruples |
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Author:
Judith Krantz
By Bantam
Average Customer Rating:   
List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $3.99
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Product Description
Scruples is the novel that created publishing history, the first-and widely acknowledged to be the very best-novel ever written about the staggeringly luxurious life of a Beverly Hills boutique and the people who work in it. Scruples was translated into twenty languages and made Rodeo Drive famous around the world. The New York Post said that "Scruples was born to be a smash bestseller. . . It has more inside information about the worlds of high fashion and Hollywood than you'd find in a dozen manuals." With Scruples, Judith Krantz earned her reputation as a blazingly talented and original storyteller. she takes her readers behind the scenes of wealthy and fame to show them the real people and the real emotions that exist at the core of even the most high-powered lives. Scruples is the leader of her #1 best-selling novels.
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Doesn't hold up well over time, 2008-03-05
I read Scruples when it first came out. It seemed to create something of a literary sensation, as I recall, having the sex scenes associated with romance literature but also having a multitude of important characters.
So, I hadn't read it since 1978 and got it out of the library yesterday morning. Spent most of the day reading it, exploding with irritation about it, then settling down and moving on.
Why explode with irritation? Well, first of all, the book is completely packed with product placement. I don't even recall if "product placement" was a term in use in 1978. Maybe they invented it to describe this book! [Edited to say it may not be true product placement, where the author is paid by the companies, but rather just Krantz's idea of adding authenticity to the book?] Since the book takes place in the rarefied ether of the very (VERY) rich, the product placement seems more like name-dropping the expensive and luxurious places and things that the Very Rich are accustomed to on a daily basis. Billy and her pilot don't just fly a plane, they fly a Beechcraft Bonanza because they couldn't take the Lear Jet, and while they're in it, the pilot muses about the Beech Sierra he also owns. Billie goes shopping for a dress to wear to her husband's funeral: but we are told the store, the designer, and the style of the dresses. Wines are referred to by name and year; cars and shoes and pens and restaurants are all specified by brand, style, model or name.
Since the bulk of the story is about the twin worlds of fashion and film, these are the places where the name-dropping is the heaviest. Lots of details about the Paris designers, their buildings, their methods of working. Too much about the inner workings of making a film. Loads of clothing description, fabric description, that sort of thing. It's simply overwhelming.
And then there's the actual name-dropping of persons. Billy works out at the same health club with Ali McGraw and Katharine Ross. Her friend wants to find a dream man who's a composite of Redford, Newman, Beatty and McQueen. Candace Bergen is hassled into an interview. Billy wants I. M. Pei to design her new store.
This sort of thing reminds me very much, strangely, of a book by Louisa May Alcott called "Jo's Boys," written in 1886! I read that book in late 2005 and I had to blip over a lot of person-names that were obviously important during the 1880s but have not carried over into the modern day. Now, I can see that over the course of 125 years some of these people might not be remembered. And Krantz's novel...well, even now, so much of this novel is outdated.
I believe that Krantz's husband, or father, or someone, originally had this book published by a vanity press because no publishing house would touch it. It's easy to see why.
They don't write them like this anymore, 2007-10-04
"Scruples" was my final beach read for the summer of 2007. Does that mean I won't be reading anymore light fiction for the rest of the year? No, it just means that summer is over. I've never been deeply fascinated by the lives of the wealthy, but "Scruples" makes it look like a lot of fun.
Judith Krantz's novel is almost thirty years old now, (this was one of the books that kids in the 70s and 80s would sneak peeks at while adults weren't looking) so how does it hold up? Very, very well. I admit I was a little reluctant when I started the book because I initially found Krantz's style overly wordy, but once I got into it I was won over and Krantz held my attention the entire time.
And I wasn't just a passive reader; to my surprise, I learned things too. The sections describing Paris couture are interesting and I liked how Krantz laid out the entire process without once making it boring. Krantz (whose husband was a producer) also goes in-depth into Hollywood and deglamorizes the film industry so that we, along with Billy, are treated to the tediousness of the on-location process. Let's not forget the process of building up "Scruples" which is written with such flair that the excitement is infectious.
The characters in the novel are well developed, though I tended to enjoy the supporting characters more than the main ones. I had a hard time accepting that Billy was only in her mid-thirties. She seemed much older but maybe that was the point. I enjoyed Spider and Valentine at first but neither came alive so that by the end of the book, my interest in them had waned. I think this is because Krantz spends so much time on the movie business toward the end that Spider and Valentine fall into the background. When they re-emerge, I had discovered characters like Dolly Moon and Vito whom I enjoyed a lot more.
Great fun, great read.
Not Just A "Chick Book"..., 2006-01-14
Judith Krantz captures your attention from the first sentence and you are hooked. It is a well written novel with a first class intriguing story. Your mind crawls into the lives of her characters and you stay there to see the end. It is a great read. If only I had written it...
A Lovely Way to Spend an Afternoon, 2005-03-19
Spoiler alert!!
Scruples is the story of Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini. It starts out with Billy, as she prefers to be called, asking her friend and employee Valentine O'Neill to create a dress for her for the Oscars. Her second husband, Vito Orsini, has a movie in the running for Best Picture. We then learn about Billy, her life as a fat outsider in Boston. Her transformation to slenderness and beauty in Paris. Her marriage to the powerful and rich Ellis Ikehorn and then producer Vito Orsini. On the way we also learn about Valentine O'neill, the french designer of women's clothing. Spider Elliot, the quintessential ladies man from California. Dolly Moon, the abundant actress Billy meets while on the set of Vito's film Mirrors and many more memorable, living characters.
Judith Krantz has a way of taking the problems of the very rich and making the reader feel as if he or she can empathize. Krantz has some pretty powerful love scenes in all her books and this one is no exception.
I enjoy this book. I love the various locations and the feel that you are getting inside gossip on famous people even though you aren't really. The characters feel so real that it's almost like I know Billy Orsini and Dolly Moon and I could run over to their house for a cup of coffee.
Yucka, Yucka, Yuck, Yuck! , 2004-09-23
Someone in my famiy read Scruples and being told that I was too young to read this book and I was not to allowd to read it but curiosity and rebellious stubbernous made me want to raed it and I learned the hard way that I should have listened to the warnings because ths was one of the worst books I ever read! It's vapid, trite stupid and very trashy and like poronography in book form!
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780553284652
ISBN: 0553284657
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: 1989-11-01
Publisher: Bantam
Release Date: 1989-10-01
Studio: Bantam |
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