Book Alert / The Scandal of the Season

The Scandal of the Season -- A Novel by Sophie Gee, Scribner '07, $25, 351 pages, ISBN #1-4165-4056-3.

What novel of the seduction of a beautiful woman by a nobleman would be complete without the triangulation produced by a jealous third party waiting in the wings? Refreshingly, in this debut novel, Sophie Gee's third party doesn't bed either of the protagonists. He is content merely to observe  them and then write about it.

Fortunately, the British poet Alexander Pope was an uncommonly fine and witty writer. Otherwise, the threadbare Pope would never have been invited into the salons of the rich, where he witnessed sparks fly when celebrated Arabella Fermor and Robert Petre, seventh Baron of Ingatestone, spent time together at the masquerades, teas, and theater engagements that comprised London's social season.

Pope knew that a thin literary reputation wouldn't  carry him far, and the torrid affair in the making would provide grist for the mill from which he'd harvest fame. Soon he had published The Rape of the Lock, a satirical poem centering on lovely Belinda (read Arabella), that would sweep Pope into the lusty world of 18th century London, more than a century before Queen Victoria would come along and spoil all their fun.