Jocasta, Clio, and Martha meet and become fast friends while traveling to Bangkok during their gap year in 1985. Martha, the quiet daughter of a vicar, plans to study law. Clio, plump and pretty, has her sights set on medical school, while beautiful, blonde Jocasta is thinking about a career in journalism. Thailand and similar environs have never appealed to me and Vincenzi does an excellent job of confirming my desire NEVER to travel there. It's amazing to me that British parents would send their 17-year-olds alone to experience the drug and sex saturated culture of Thailand for months on end, but I guess I am also flabbergasted by the idea of sending an 8-year-old to boarding school! Obviously I'm not British!
Well, I'm getting off track here. Nearly a year after meeting, one of the girls (who remains unidentified for a good part of the novel) gives birth and abandons her baby at Heathrow Airport, then we fast forward 15 years and find that all 3 of the girls have grown into women with issues. Clio is a physician specializing in geriatrics, engaged to an overbearing surgeon who believes that she should give up her career to support him in his. Martha is an extremely successful solicitor who focuses 24/7 on her law career until she meets a much younger man, Ed, and is chosen by the new Centre Forward party to run for political office. Jocasta is a journalist working for a tabloid-like paper and in love with commitment-shy Nick, also a journalist. Jocasta's brother, Josh, who was also in Thailand with the girls, has been unfaithful to his his wife multiple times and is trying to save his marriage. At this time the reader is also introduced to Kate, a beautiful 16-year-old adopted by Helen and Jim after being found abandoned at Heathrow. Kate is desperate to find out where she came from and why her mother abandoned her. Much drama ensues, of course, as our basic cast of characters reconnects. What is especially interesting is how different British politics, law, medicine, and family life are from ours here in the U.S.A.
One of my complaints about Vincenzi's excellent novel, The Best of Times, which I read last month, was that there was no listing of characters to remind the reader of who was who. She does provide that in Sheer Abandon and I have to confess that I referred back to it frequently. I love Vincenzi's imagination, her language, her ability to juggle multiple threads of a story and bring them all together in a way that seems uncontrived and logical. I do believe, though, that if she could have cut this novel to about 2/3 of it's 626 pages it would have been a big improvement. I almost gave up and I did read ahead because I wasn't sure I could make it to the end! I did, and I'm glad that I did. It was worth it, but i have to warn you that you'd better set aside a good chunk of time for it!
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