{"id":318,"date":"2005-01-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T21:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=318"},"modified":"2024-12-31T12:21:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T23:21:23","slug":"miss-ambar-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2005\/01\/15\/miss-ambar-regrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss Ambar Regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>John Cleary<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Harper Collins<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times , January 15th 2005<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">John Cleary\u2019s latest offering is described as <em>\u201ca classic love story set against a world in turmoil.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Do not fear, gentle reader, this\u00a0 is an unfairly florid assessment of a rather sweet, and easy-to-digest morsel.\u00a0 It tells the story of two not so star crossed lovers-TV news reporter Jack Shakespeare and the eponymous Adele Ambar, a wannabe actress who refuses to realise her only theatrical talent is being drop-dead gorgeous.\u00a0 Her pursuit of fame and recognition takes her first to New York, then London, while Jack (who has no intention of leaving his own, comfortable, career) waits for her to come to her senses and return to Sydney.\u00a0 The world turmoil is certainly there (they are in New York on September 11th, Jack becomes Channel 15\u2019s correspondent in Afghanistan), as are personal dramas.\u00a0 However the novel is saved from torrid melodrama and saccharin poisoning by Jack.\u00a0 Describing events after the fact, his wry and knowing descriptions and a hint of journalistic detachment give his narrative an enjoyable lightness and humour.\u00a0 Take their first love making for example; <em>\u201cDon\u2019t hang around waiting for a sweaty description of the next hour.\u00a0 In my second year at university I read an old novel by Evelyn Waugh.\u00a0 In it he reduced a seduction to its bare essentials, a one-lone paragraph: that night I took formal possession of her.\u00a0 I remember I fell out of bed laughing&#8230;ever since then I\u2019ve been unable to read erotic passages without wondering how old Evelyn would have rendered them\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Cleary is more Jane Austen lite than Charlotte Br\u00f6nte, but <em>Miss Ambar Regrets<\/em> is certainly good summer beach fare. Enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Cleary<\/p>\n<p>\nOtago Daily Times review January 15th 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32,370,33,18],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-32","tag-fiction","tag-john-cleary","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1194,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/1194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}