MY LAST DUCHESS BY DAISY GOODWIN, HEADLINE REVIEW, $29.99.
This stylish historical novel, set at the turn of the 19th century, gives us beautiful clothes and lavish jewels … a British duke in need of a rich wife … and a lively American heiress with a mother ambitious for her to “marry well”.
And so Cora Cash, the toast of New York, is launched onto the trans-Atlantic “marriage market” where her fortune is seen as fair exchange for the title of Ivo, Duke of Wareham. Yet is the duke after more than Cora’s millions? And now she has the ring, can she win his heart? In short – will love triumph over money? It’s a great subject – Edith Wharton and Henry James were similarly intrigued by the meeting of wealthy Americans and aristocratic English – and Daisy Goodwin (chair of judges for the 2010 Orange Prize) has delivered us the full period drama, which anyone with even the slightest taste for ripped bodices and gilded drawing rooms – I raise my hand on both – will be bound to enjoy.
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