Staying with the period theme, but stepping away from The Ultimate Book List, A Vision of Loveliness takes place in 1960’s London and follows a social climbing Jane James as she gets her first foot hole into the life she so desperately wants through Suzie, a young girl about time whom she looks strikingly similar to. Jane, now Janey, has been practicing for this life, knows what she wants and is unapologetic in getting it.
It was only after the first few chapters I remembered I had already read this book, but I recalled liking it the first time so I carried on. This book highlights very different situations for Jane; her life in Norbury with her narrow-minded, judgemental Aunt, a grimey, freezing flat in London filled with beautiful gowns and jewels to a short lived beautiful flat in Mayfair full of forgotten property of past mistresses. While glamour is prevalent to the story, none of the situations in the story are very appealing by the realistic descriptions Levene gives of the underbelly of 60’s London.
Jane is not a your typically likable character but her sharp inner monologue is hilarious and her determination to make something out of herself is commendable, especially considering the era when it was hard for women to get a foothold. Jane takes every chance she can get.
As much as I enjoyed this book I felt that it ended very abruptly, you are sitting there with only a handful of pages left knowing that something bad has to happen – something bad ALWAYS happens – then in the last thirty or so pages it does. But I guess the story isn’t really about that, it’s about Jane and how she got to that point, how she “climbed” that social ladder and used the people around her to get exactly what she wants.
One of the things I really love about this book is that each chapter has a little “helpful tip” that seems to have been lifted from one of Jane’s etiquette books, things like:
Wear gloves whenever you can bear to; go without a handbag as often as possible.
These tiny details of personal grooming might appear mere trifles when taken one by one. But add them together and they can make the difference between rich and poor, married of single, happy ever after and a miserable broken home.
Anger, spite and bad nerves are the sworn enemies of a pretty face.
While complete drivel nowadays it works to show the kind of points that Jane has grown up moulding herself around. They work in beautiful contrast to the shenanigans Jane and Suzie get up to in the pages.
I enjoyed my reread of this book, it’s dark comedic narrative is almost satirical at times – and who doesn’t love that? Levene’s writing style is good and I like how she used a main character who is unapologetically unlikable but still managed to keep you gripped, reading from one page to the next. I will definitely be looking out for other books of hers in the future.
Great quotes and evocative passages from A Vision of Loveliness:
…a crudely concreted patch with a hole left for a dusty hydrangea which was now wearing its winter wardrobe of dead brown blooms.
The mirrored room was packed with what looked like hundreds of women straightening seams, fixing straps, re-gluing eyelashes – like the emergency ward in a dolls’ hospital.
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