Summer reads

Summer reads: doesn’t the very phrase conjure up unfortunate images of lobster sunburn?

Summer reads: doesn’t the very phrase conjure up unfortunate images of lobster sunburn? But what to do, when a long summer stretches ahead and there are still hours in the day to kill after you’ve finished watching the footie, or the live feed of Big Brother 7? (I know! compulsive viewing, isn’t it? But that’s for another article.) So, whether you intend to laze on your yacht, trek for gorillas, brave the Bognor rain, or find yourself stranded at Gatwick, everyone needs an undemanding book somewhere in their Louis Vuitton.

You don’t have to be so well-heeled to enjoy Plum Sykes’ second novel, The Debutante Divorcée (Fig Tree, pp. 250, £12.99): you just need to be interested in people. People whose lives are gloriously out of proportion, admittedly, but that’s the fun of reading aspiration-lit.

The plot is incidental. When newly wed Sylvie meets newly divorced Lauren on a beach, she is tossed unwittingly into the narcissistic world of New York divorcées and Husband Huntresses, with their Divorce Showers, glamorous funerals, and plans to Make Out like back in college. Will Sylvie’s ‘nice gene pool’ husband Hunter be snaffled by arch-predator Sophia, or will her dreams of an Eternity advert marriage triumph?

Who cares that most of the characters are shallow, their lives air-brushed and self-absorbed, when Sykes conveys their world with such panache. She namechecks famous designers with the knowing tone of one certain to receive gifts in return for such high-octane product placement, which, in case the rule holds good for a book review, includes Valentino, Pucci, and Hermès by page three. Witty and well-observed (a Russian walks ‘as though he were invading a minor nation’), Sykes waves the banner for frivolity.