RSS
Home
I was so hoping for a divorce: a book review of 'Gilding Lily' by Tatiana Boncompagni
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Save yourself the expense, you have read this story before. It is a chick lit standard; young woman with solid values marries into a family of wealth, she becomes a mother but her mother-in-law doesn’t approve of her and thus makes her otherwise privileged life pure hell. This inspires the young heroine to right all the worldly wrongs.
In ‘Gilding Lily’ Lily Bartholomew marries Robert Bartholomew after a quick romance. Together they had plans on being New York society’s newest IT couple for a few years before reproducing, but Lily found herself with child right after the honeymoon which meant that the honeymoon she was expecting her life to be turns…I would say nightmarish but for that to happen she really would have to be living hand to mouth someplace like Cleveland while her husband manages a second rate Denny’s – and that just isn’t the case.
Lily’s husband quits his job (or was he fired as the rumor mill suggests) and she suddenly is thrust into a world where only the best is acceptable even when you can no longer afford it. Lily, being from a middleclass background, knows she can survive but she isn’t so sure about Robert. In fact, Robert seems to be the only one who doesn’t know that he isn’t employed. His mother, Lily’s nemesis, keeps buying him expensive clothing for the hob knobbing he is suppose to be doing in order to get whatever employment he thinks is much more acceptable for someone of his status.
Lily sees herself as being between a hard place and a rock since she gave up a promising career as a writer for a financial publication to pursue life as a socialite. So in my estimation, she was much too smart to find herself in the situation of having a husband who doesn’t acknowledge that he was the one whose actions put them in the financial pickle they are in. As one would imagine, their marriage suffers. As Lily takes care of their daughter (I think it was a daughter, I read this book back in the late summer maybe early fall of ‘08) she starts to notice a double standard, something that the reader of ‘Gilding’ notices far earlier, which betrays her intelligence and makes her character unlikeable as well as weak. She starts to note that her husband seems to feel that he can justify spending money on something as frivolous as a sports car, which means that they have no means to transport their daughter since there is no place to put a child seat, along with other expenses like a gym and such, while Lily herself has to almost grovel for spending some money on clothing for a vacation with his mother and stepfather that she would prefer not to go on. Oh, and she has also gained a few pounds after giving birth to their child which does not go unnoticed by her passive aggressive mother-in-law.
Since I didn’t like this book I’m going to reveal the ending so be aware * SPOILER ALERT *, Lily and Robert split up. I was almost cheering at this point of the novel because I didn’t know how much more of Lily’s martyrdom I could take. Then things change, rolling my eyes toward the ceiling, and the truth about her husband is revealed, yet he still seemed to me to be a GIGANTIC )(&%&^). The story ends with them getting back together after the Robert sets things aright with Mommie Dearest.
I think the novel would have ended more honestly and even with more hope if Lily left her husband and learned that she wasn’t a Cinderella, but something much better; a strong independent woman.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. Boncompagni’s writing didn’t really do it for me, and as I noted above, I wasn’t a fan of the storyline either.
Related Articles:
Comments
