cover image There's No Place Like the Ritz

There's No Place Like the Ritz

Nancy Winters. Dutton Books, $18.95 (246pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24658-9

At the beginning of this story of love among the jet set, Nanda Dobson, a fashionable journalist married to Duff Hamilton, an alcoholic artist, has fallen in love with Timothy Shea, a cabaret singer. Readers will quickly suspect that Tim is gay, though Nanda, obsessed by passion, denies it. That is very nearly the narrative limit of this stylish, current but curiously static story from the author of The Girl on the Coca-Cola Tray. On an extended European trip with both Duff and Tim, Nanda goes to bed alone each night, comforting herself with cocaine as she considers the nature and varieties of intimacy. Not much changes between Tim and Nanda when she begins to see his therapist, as well as her own. Nor does much insight occur after Duff checks into a rehabilitation hospital, and Nanda goes with Tim to gigs she has arranged in posh hotels in Rio and then in London, where, even though both of them take other lovers, she continues to entertain fantasies of a full life with Tim. While glimpses of five-star living in some of the world's great hotels offer their own reward, Winters' tale is a glib portrayal that fails to move or convince. (July)