The Last Romantics

Four Englishwomen whose lives first intertwine at Oxford University are the focus of this splendid first novel. Coming of age in the early 1960s, and sure that their next step, after school, will be marriage, Penny, Alice, Daphne and Louisa devote more time to finding suitable husbands than they do to scholarship. The story moves forward with a quartet of weddings, followed by births, betrayals and divorce. More than anything else, it is Louisa's husband Edmund who provides the connections among these very different women. At Oxford, he is their perfect Englishman, handsome, sporting and erudite. Later he symbolizes traditional values in a world that lacks dignity and style. At the end of a decade, he is a remnant of a way of life the women have come to regard as falsely romantic. Seebohm, author of The Man Who Was Vogue, a biography of Conde Nast, has chosen a compelling and accessible narrative structure in which each woman speaks in her turn. The prose is elegant, and images are vivid and sometimes hilarious. Readers will find pleasure on every page of this book. (November 5)