"I can assure you that the class system is alive and well and
living in people's minds in England." So reports Yorkshire-bred
columnist Cooper (herself "ashamedly middle-class") - and she goes
on to document this hardly surprising announcement with moderately
amusing anecdotes, bits of borrowed research, and half-serious
generalizations. A grand romp? Well, more like an overlong
hop-skip-and-stumble. The book's organization is ploddingly
subject-by-subject - from "children" to "education" to
"occupations" to "sex and marriage" to "religion," etc. Cooper uses
cutely named prototypes to represent the upper classes,
upper-middles, middle-middles, lower-middles ("Mrs. Jen Teale"),
the working classes. . . and Mr. and Mrs. Nouveau-Richards. Some of
the humor depends on puns involving British brand names - though,
considering the level of the decipherable puns ("Lucky the girl
that lays the golden egghead"), perhaps one should be grateful for
the untranslatable ones. Tastelessness occasionally intrudes. (On
homosexuality in upper-class marriage: "The sex side works, because
the upper-class woman doesn't expect much, and the man just shuts
his eyes and thinks of Benjamin Britten.") And the reliance on
derisive stereotypes often becomes offensive - especially since
there are sporadic pretensions to sociological significance. Still,
Cooper is sometimes informative on recent trends: "One of the great
job phenomena of the seventies is the way the upper classes have
taken up cooking for money." Or: "I recently met an extremely
grand, much-divorced old woman wearing orange satin drainpipes and
a white tee shirt with I AM A VIRGIN printed across the bust." And
the best moments come from such second-hand anecdotes as: "When
John Betjeman married an upper-class girl he drove his
mother-in-law insane at the pre-wedding party by wearing a made-up
bow tie on elastic and flicking it all the way through dinner."
Spottily engaging sneers and one-liners for browsing Anglophiles,
then, but lower-middle-class as humor and no-class as sociology.
(Kirkus Reviews)
CLASS IS DEAD! Or so everyone claims. Who better to refute this
than Jilly Cooper! Describing herself as 'upper middle class',
Jilly claims that snobbery is very much alive and thriving! Meet
her hilarious characters! People like Harry Stow-Crat, Mr and Mrs
Nouveau-Richards, Samantha and Gideon Upward, and Jen Teale and her
husband Brian. Roar with laughter at her horribly unfair
observations on their everyday pretensions - their sexual
courtships, choice of furnishings, clothes, education, food,
careers and ambitions... For they will all remind you of people
that you know!
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
