Imogen De La Bere

This story opens in rural Kaikoura. Salome Wentwood is struggling to make a living to retain her home and provide for her four daughters. Her husband Palliser has absconded leaving behind debts and damaged friendships. Salome, with the aid of her her husband's one time friend, Philip Butterworth, a lawyer, she manages to settle his debts and build a fruit wine business. With no communication from Palliser, their friendship deepens.
Meanwhile, said scoundrel husband has arrived back in England and has embarked on one more scheme to try and make some money to resolve his problems. He turns his charms to deceiving brother and sister Hubert and Blanche Lovelace, posing as a widower.
This proved to be an entertaining romp. The only thing that confused me was the the time period it was set in. With the simple way of life the Wentwood's were living and the more genteel setting in England with butlers and maids, it took me a while to realise this was late 1950's, not early 1900's. However in hindsight this underlines how rapidly life has changed in the last 60 years.… (mehr)

Palliser Wentwood is no Jeeves. Unlike P.G. Wodehouse's exemplary butler, Wentwood neither shimmers silently in and out of rooms nor extricates his master from impossible scrapes. Instead, he drinks his employer's brandy, pays scant attention to his personal hygiene, and performs his duties in a lackadaisical manner - if he performs them at all.

But this may be due to the fact that Palliser Wentwood is not really a butler.

He is, in fact, something of a rogue - a man who has abandoned his wife and four children in New Zealand and come to England to make his fortune. His plans for doing so involve Hubert Lovelace, a wealthy Anglican priest, and his massive and homely sister, Blanche. By insinuating himself into the Lovelace household, Wentwood hopes he can work his charms on Blanche and eventually extract enough cash from her to return to New Zealand.

In her first novel, Imogen de la Bere has crafted a wise and charming comedy of manners and morals. As the narrative switches back and forth between Palliser in England and his wife, Salome, and children in New Zealand, de la Bere raises the stakes by introducing a potential love interest for the abandoned wife - and an inconvenient case of guilty conscience for the scheming Wentwood.

This is an old-fashioned novel with old-fashioned pleasures: a slightly formal narrative, complex characters you come to care about, and a strong story that more than earns its satisfying ending.… (mehr)