A Vision of Loveliness

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But add them together and they can make the difference between rich and poor, married of single, happy ever after and a miserable broken home. For me it’s easy to describe these autumn-joy foliage hues as delicious foods; apple red, cranberry, eggplant, beet, carrot, pumpkin, apricot, yellow squash, lemon, lime, and dark zucchini. While complete drivel nowadays it works to show the kind of points that Jane has grown up moulding herself around. A chance encounter with a handbag leads Jane 'Janey' James through her journey to become one of society's upper class.

Through James and David, Gillespie explores the chasm between how children and adults perceive the world, and the devastating consequences of falling through this gap. This year those damaging blights missed our area, leaving us blessed beyond measure with vibrant colors, seeming as if each leaf has its own internal glowing light. This book highlights very different situations for Jane; her life in Norbury with her narrow-minded, judgemental Aunt, a grimey, freezing flat in London filled with beautiful gowns and jewels to a short lived beautiful flat in Mayfair full of forgotten property of past mistresses. i understand the author was trying to represent white working class attitudes of the time, but there exists a certain human responsibility which goes beyond providing authenticity in a work of fiction. It's the 1950s and Jane lives with her aunt and uncle in Norbury, working for a local dressmaker by day and practising make-up and French turns by night, convinced she will soon be rid of her drab, provincial surroundings.Psalm 96:11-12 “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Jane James knows that she was born for better things than evenings spent eating Heinz tinned potato salad in her Aunt's house.

Although the adult characters are somewhat two-dimensional – James's mother is obsessed with rearranging cupboards and serving tea and cake – this is more than compensated for by the complexity of James's inner world.

Levene has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and while her two young heroines are vain, materialistic and manipulative, she deftly illuminates the psyche of this era – when women who wanted to "better themselves" had to make themselves appealing to men, married or otherwise. I like the sound of some of her other books where at one point I thought I wouldn’t read any more of hers!

The period detail is enthralling and it makes for compelling reading, but in the end I was left with a bad taste in my mouth.Among the sugar daddies and posh, panting youths, there is Jane’s long-suffering uncle George, who hovers in the kitchen and worries about her new life; and there is Tony, a genuinely sweet beau Jane only stepped out with because he got her into a Hardy Amies sample sale. Velvet brown cattails poofed into white puffs at the tips, having been spent after a hot dry summer.

Everything is a bit more sordid than Jane would have expected, but she loves living with Suzy and being wined and dined by rich men. The story is framed through the lens of a young gal (not yet twenty) who is desparate to improve herself, the circles she moves in and indeed her wardrobe.A blonde woman had broken away from the laughing group in the corner and was heading in their direction.