Act of Will (Paperback, Reissue)

From the author of the deservedly popular A Woman of Substance (1979), this bland, trudging story of three generations of stubborn women is pure going-through-the-motions formula writing without the slightest leavening of wit or passion. The story begins in Woman of Substance territory - Yorkshire, England, in the early 1920's - where a child of genteel poverty, plucky young Audra Kenton, is forced by almost Dickensian circumstance (the early deaths of her parents, a cruel-hearted aunt) into the working world; she takes a job as a nanny with a well-to-do Leeds family and there meets construction worker Vincent Crowther, who is beneath her station but looks like Robert Taylor - five months later they're married and she's regretting it, since he likes to hang out with the boys and runs to his mother at the first sign of trouble. But after the birth of their daughter Christina in 1931 (an earlier child had died of meningitis), Audra is stricken with new purpose: through an act of will she will give Christina everything she herself has been denied (faced with this maternal determination, Vincent clears his throat a few times and begins to gray charmingly at the temples - the fate of most of Bradford's married men). World War II passes (blink and you miss it) and it's 1951. The story now belongs to Christina, who through her mother's scrimping and saving and backbreaking labor has just been admitted to the Royal College of Art in London - the plan is for her to become a brilliant landscape painter. But when Audra falls ill due to overwork, Christina decides to chuck it all and make some bucks as a designer; almost overnight she becomes a "superstar in the international fashion firmament" and is able to take care of a protesting Audra in style. The only interesting complication of the book arises when Christina becomes pregnant by a married M.P., but Bradford deus ex machinas her way out of it with unseemly haste (a freak car accident causes a miscarriage) and sends Christina to New York, where she marries a shrewd businessman who makes her a house-hold word. The novel is framed by a 1978 Prologue and Epilogue that show Christina's 19-year old daughter, Kyle, refusing to go to work in her mother's fashion empire - she will become a famous landscape painter. Full circle, and not soon enough. This is billed as a three-generational saga, but more than half of its zestless expanse is devoted to Audra, who is a drone; Bradford hurries through Christina, and Kyle is just an afterthought (but beware the lurking sequel). (Kirkus Reviews)

"From beloved bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford comes the enthralling saga of three generations of extraordinary women--of the fate that befalls them, and the choices that define their lives
"IN THE NAME OF LOVE.
Orphaned after the death of her mother, well-bred Audra Kenton rose from selfless nurse to servant of an affluent suffragette, to a fiercely independent bride whose passionate marriage was overtaken by an unforeseeable tragedy. Now Audra has but one dream--to bestow upon her brilliantly artistic daughter, every opportunity that she was denied
AT THE HEART OF AMBITION.
Given the world, the stubborn Christina has forsaken the wishes of her noble mother to forge the career of her choice--that of a glittering Manhattan fashion empire she hopes to bequeath to her own daughter. But in young and beautiful Kyle stirs a spirit that is inherently headstrong, equally independent, and just as ironically resistant to the sacrifices made in the name of love.
FOR THE SAKE OF A DREAM.
From the picturesque Yorkshire Dales to the "haute couture" luxuries of Paris and London to the bittersweet respite of home and family, three women face stunning betrayals and astonishing reversals of fate as each brings her own intimate struggle to their need of personal success and to a triumphant and heartening understanding of devotion, duty, and destiny.

General

Imprint:	HarperCollinsPublishers
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	June 1993
Authors:	Barbara Taylor Bradford
Dimensions:	178 x 111 x 34mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Mass Market
Pages:	528
Edition:	Reissue
ISBN-13:	978-0-586-05850-3
Categories:	Books
LSN:	0-586-05850-8
Barcode:	9780586058503

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