A Vision of Loveliness

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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: Having very much enjoyed this author’s book ‘Ghastly Business’ I decided to try ‘A Vision of Loveliness’. It is a completely different novel set in a different era but just as enjoyable. Jane James and her sister were taken in by their aunt Doreen when they were orphaned during World War II.

When she finds a crocodile handbag left in a pub, it leads her to Suzy St John, a girl-about-town with the glamour, the confidence and the irresistible allure that Jane has been practising for so long. Suzy takes Jane under her wing, and Jane becomes Janey, a near carbon-copy of her new best friend and a delighted adventurer in an easy, sleazy, sixties West-End world of part-time modelling and full-time man-trapping. Levene’s prose is so fresh, so enjoyable that you can’t help reading snippets out loud' Daily Telegraph Money was rolling in, more so when the parade of random strip acts was ditched in favour of a Broadway-style show, complete with a story. But the business was growing too far, too fast and bigger personalities than even Banerjee wanted in on the action. This was not going to end well for some. This is biting social satire, drenched in extravagant shoes, jewellery and clothes. Levene has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and while her two young heroines are vain, materialistic and manipulative, she deftly illuminates the psyche of this era – when women who wanted to "better themselves" had to make themselves appealing to men, married or otherwise. Blurb - Jane James knows that she must have been born to better things than a dingy bedroom in her Aunt Doreen's house in Norbury and evenings spent eating gala pie and Heinz tinned potato salad in their 'sitting-cum-dining room'. So, armed with her well-thumbed copy of Lady Be Good, she practises her French turns, her killer smile and precisely how much thigh to show when crossing her legs, and dreams of a time when she can be a part of the world she glimpses through the Mayfair windows of the cashmere shop where she works.

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When she finds a crocodile handbag left in a pub, it leads her to Suzy St John, a girl-about-town with the glamour, confidence and irresistible allure that Jane has been practising for so long. Suzy takes Jane under her wing, and Jane becomes Janey, a near carbon-copy of her new best friend and a delighted adventurer in an easy, sleazy, sixties West-End world of part-time modelling and full-time man-trapping. This books certainly manages to create a vibrant atmosphere of London, and the world in which Janey and Suzy immerse themselves. I like that it doesn't try and sugar coat the truth - it lets the audience reach those conclusions on their own. It is a great peek behind the facade of female roles in the 50s-60s: expectation vs. reality. To audiences the club was sold as a product of the women’s liberation movement. Women who worked all week could now follow the example of the men and go out in groups to have a good time, no harm done. Louise Levene is the author of A Vision of Loveliness, a BBC Book at Bedtime, which was also longlisted for the Desmond Elliott first novel prize, Ghastly Business and The Following Girls. She was the dance critic for the Sunday Telegraph for sixteen years and before that a dance writer on the Independent, but now works for the Financial Times. She lives in London with her husband and their two children. Directed by Alice Johannessen, the ghosts of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies inevitably haunt proceedings, but this is a story with a style and substance all of its own. So good, reader, I bought the book.

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. sight, view or vision? View is more literary than sight or vision. It is the only word for talking about how well you can see: I didn’t have a good sight/​vision of the stage. Vision must always be used with a possessive pronoun: my/​his/​her, etc. (field of) vision. It is not used with the prepositions in, into and out of that are very frequent with sight and view: There was nobody in vision. • A tall figure came into vision. Patterns Synonyms sight sight view ▪ vision These are all words for the area or distance that you can see from a particular position. sight the area or distance that you can see from a particular position: 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.Aside from Deloume, most of the narrative voices belong to the road's residents, during a late summer in the 1990s. Initially their lives seem unconnected – a Ukrainian butcher who struggles both with English and his eyesight, an ageing Native American artist, a pregnant Korean widow, and a mentally disabled young boy. But history brings them together.

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. The couple moved outside her field of vision (= total area you can see from a particular position). I loved the writing style in this book. There is a dry wit with some fantastic descriptions and one-liners of people and situations. A walk-on character is described as ‘some old trout called Felicity in what looked like a short-sleeved stair carpet . . .’; Jane is described when talking to Henry, Suzy’s lover, as ‘[making] no effort at all at normal conversation- as if she’d taken her batteries out to save power. . .’ Jane is not always a terribly likeable character but she does have many good points and I found myself sympathising with her because she wanted to make more of her life in an era when it was very difficult for a young woman to get anything like a well-paid job. When Amanda Baker was 14 she found a letter written by her runaway mother to her unborn child: 'Dear Jeremy' it began 'or Amanda...'The text is interspersed with snippets of advice about the way a girl should behave and dress from a book called ‘Lady be Good’. Suzy seems like the embodiment of all the book’s advice and Jane is more than happy when she takes her under her wing. What follows is an entertaining and dark story of girls about town living on next to nothing in borrowed flats and trying to get as many meals paid for by other people as possible – bearing in mind that they have to eat very little to maintain their svelte figures. 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. I raced through A Vision of Loveliness, taking great delight in its sharply resurrected period detail... It's a delight - funny, sad and clever' Barbara Trapido