{"id":523,"date":"2010-03-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T22:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=523"},"modified":"2024-12-31T14:08:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T01:08:52","slug":"lush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/03\/13\/lush\/","title":{"rendered":"Lush"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Vanessa Johnson<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Penguin<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, March 13th 2010<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The opening chapters of Lush<\/em> represent a bad 48 hours for Lydia Kyriacos.\u00a0 Dumped by her boyfriend, Marcus (seemingly taking all his belongings with him, leaving their London flat practically empty), her cat has been run over, her credits cards are maxed, out and her job as an accounts manager at big PR firm is hanging by a thread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as she would like to crawl into a bottle to escape, she is beginning to wonder whether drink may be part of the problem rather than the solution.\u00a0 Turning to her friends for help isn\u2019t an option \u2013 not only are they away on holiday, they party hard and expect her to party harder \u2013 and her father back home in New Zealand would only worry that she is following in her mother\u2019s footsteps.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is so often the case, however, crisis provides an opportunity for change. With nobody else to prop her up and forced to find solutions on her own, Lydia responds by growing up.\u00a0 Avoiding situations involving social drinking as best she can, she immerses herself into her work (with gratifying results) and tentatively begins to develop new friendships as Lydia rather than Marcus-and-Lydia.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this being chic-lit – the cover asks \u2018can romance survive without champagne?\u2019 – every man in sight except The One (in this case Malcolm\u2019s best friend Andy) practically throw themselves at her, and but this novel irritated me much less than most of its contemporaries.\u00a0 Rather than giving way to tearful self-pity, Lydia finds practical and realistic strategies to resist temptation and gets on with her life.\u00a0 Her growing maturity is nicely contrasted with her friend Miriam, for whom any problem can be resolved with sufficient alcohol, causal sex or, preferably, both.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I am becoming conservative in my old age, but I found Lush<\/em> a much more satisfying read than the usual, 30-something \u2018chic-lite\u2019 wish-fulfilment that gives this genre a bad name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/more-satisfaction-usual-chick-lit-read<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanessa Johnson
\n
\nOtago Daily Times review March 13th 2010<\/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":[115,370,18,116],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-115","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-vanessa-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","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=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}