Book review | Tenterhooks

This delicious book does exactly what it says on the cover: it kept me teasingly and expertly on tenterhooks until practically the final paragraph of the last page. 

Edith and Bruce Ottley are a married couple of the leisured Edwardian London upper class with domestic servants and numerous social occasions which unfortunately sometimes lead to attractions between people who happen to be married to other people. 

Will Edith succumb to the charms of a handsome young widower, and will Bruce be able resist a dalliance with the children’s governess? 

In the words of Helen Taylor, Leverson’s novels are ‘feather light, dialogue-packed and often tongue-in-cheek’ and the author bears comparison to Jane Austen, sensitive to the underlying motives behind human behaviour, with an instinctive knowledge of the society in which she moved.

With the Apple TV+ screening of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers — six young American heiresses storm 1870s London in the hope of marrying English 'Dooks' as Consuelo Vanderbilt did with 'The Dook of Marlborough' — it seems to me Ada Leverson’s works are pitch-perfect for dramatising. The sharpness of her wit will appeal to lovers of top-class observational humour, and there are enough bustles and frou-frou to please the Bridgerton crowd. 

The author herself (1862–1933) was a loyal friend of Oscar Wilde and is surely due for popular recognition in her own right as the writer of six sparklingly witty novels of  — if you happen to be rich — a golden world that has disappeared forever.

Author: Ada Leverson

Imprint: Michael Walmer

ISBN: 978-0-6485905-4-5 paperback