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I thought this book would be better for all its NYT Book Review (and other) praise, but it wasn't. Ostensibly a sprawling family saga centring around matriarch Penelope, it's basically the same 2 or 3 characters with different names playing out over three generations.

If you're a "good" character, then you're independent, stubborn, glossy haired, tall, beautiful. You love France, holiday in Spain, dream of Cornwall, and believe in children out of wedlock and monied bohemian lifestyles (but not too monied, nor do you care too much about cashola, but it doesn't matter because it will come pouring down in the hundreds of thousands anyway). You know and namedrop all the same (white) (western) painters and authors. You joined the war effort due to the "cultured refugee faced" (I kid you not) Jews who rent rooms in your massive inherited London mansion. You are or love gardeners or artists or offspring of artists. You have a 50% chance of dying in the great war.

If you're a "bad" character, you endlessly harp on class and money and other selfish concerns. You have no interest in intimacy or art or any higher calling than social climbing and your awful ugly children and awful ugly spouse or your anorexic supermodel lover of the mo. You are either ugly and empty or beautiful and empty. You hate gardeners.

Everyone, regardless of integrity or intention, wants a scotch and soda.

So why did I plow through 500+ pages of this? And even tear up at moments? Because the idea of lives fully lived is a powerful one and Ms. Pilcher tells a well paced story, even if it is written in a hackneyed trashy romance style. Certainly it wasn't hard to blow through, and it was sort of fun watching all the foils of the story unfold in mediocrity. I left my copy in Newark Airport on top of the recycling bin for someone else to take it up or pitch it in.