Reading this book was a bit like binge-watching a long and addictive 80s soap opera, with a dash of beautiful English countryside.
Before I happened to read her obituary this year, I never heard of Dame Jilly Cooper, a beloved British icon and the author of popular, glitzy novels about the lives of the British upper class. I also never heard the term “bonkbuster”, even though I did read a few racy Jackie Collins novels back in the day. Initially, I meant Rivals to be my read while over in Japan, but it turned out to be an entirely wrong pick for an active, hectic holiday. Ideally, you would read it while sunning yourself by the pool, or taking a long bath with a box of chocolates at hand.
Like most soap operas, Rivals has an extensive cast of characters, so extensive in fact that the book provides a list to help you keep track of who is who. The rivals of the title however can be narrowed down to two men. One is Lord Tony Baddingham, an utterly ruthless executive at the head of Corinium Television, an English company producing regional programs in the Cotswolds. Another is Rupert Campbell-Black, a retired showjumping Olympian, Minister for Sport in the Tory government, a supreme physical specimen and a divorced chick magnet. You know you’re reading a fantasy when a British MP can be a sex symbol.
Tony has every confidence that his company will retain the independent television franchise that’s coming up for grabs, especially after Corinium nabs the brilliant Irish TV interviewer Declan O’Hara, who moves in next to Rupert’s estate together with his eccentric wife and three children. But could it be that Tony has some unexpected competition?
The book has a distinct sense of two halves. The first one is more leisurely, slowly introducing the main and secondary players and dedicating many, many pages to glamorous parties and social gatherings. As the franchise competition heats up in the second half, so do the various machinations, deceptions and politicking, though they’re still secondary to the interpersonal relationships and dramas. I still felt like I learned more about the way British TV of the era operated than I ever wanted to know.
The mammoth cast is filled with Tony and Rupert’s families, friends, enemies, lovers and employees. As I cleared the first hundred pages or so, I wondered if there were going to be any purely sympathetic players in this cutthroat, egotistical world of TV. Witty and amusing writing is all fine and good, but I was craving some emotional investment for the remaining six hundred pages. For me, the book really got going with the arrival of Declan O’Hara and the introduction of his youngest daughter Taggie, a gentle soul whose dyslexia makes her painfully shy, the kind of character who instantly inspires protective feelings. Others, like the fiercely ambitious and abrasive American TV exec Cameron Cook, reveal their vulnerable side over time. I eventually grew quite fond of most of the characters, even if some of them remain forever drama queens.
Cooper has an obvious affection for the countryside, with many loving descriptions of nature’s beauty and blooming flowers, and a gift for sharp, well-observed social satire and irreverent humour. There are some great one-liners, sex that’s just explicit and descriptive enough without stopping the narrative in its tracks, and a romantic storyline that I was on the fence about until the last few pages, when I was grudgingly won over. Rivals is pure escapism in a true 80s fashion, excessive, exuberant, and sometimes very politically incorrect. The frothy tongue-in-cheek style really made the pages fly and it was so easy to get lost in a world where everything exists for a reader’s pleasure.
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