Rich Deceiver - Softcover

Like satirist Fay Weldon, first-novelist White deals with what Weldon's booster quote here refers to as ``domestic infamy'': here, in a tale of an ego-squashed little wife in search of her husband's love, who--after some bizarre plotting and precipitous pratfalls- -emerges fulfilled, fat, and free-standing. Ellie Freeman and husband Malcolm, both in their 40s, live in the unlovely Liverpool neighborhood of Nelson Street. In a dressing gown ``the color of a cornflake,'' Ellie listens to Malcolm, an overweight warehouseman, growling downstairs--but in her pocket she hides a letter announcing that she's won œ1,525,000 in a sweepstake. After several frazzled starts, Ellie decides to ``buy'' Malcolm a career by investing in a struggling blinds-firm that would be thereby obliged to hire her husband. (All this secretly, with the curiously interested help of a bank executive.) The magic wand is waved, and Malcolm is transformed from ``moaning, miserable and hopeless'' to confident, glib, and charming. But two cars and a bungalow later, Ellie discovers that she's become even more insecure and lonely, and, worse, she's created in Malcolm a monster, arisen from Nelson Street clay. He leaves her for the stunning gallery-manager Gabriella, whose clothes ``flutter several feet behind her.'' Ellie's revenge on the way to recapturing Malcolm--a virtuoso performance involving the roosting of Nelson Street's most colorful citizens amongst the posh, along with general mayhem--is blunted by wholesale betrayal. But Ellie, hitherto rattled, buffeted, living for and in another, will finally find herself--``confused, funny, pathetic, emotional but basically likeable.'' An entertaining debut from a sure English talent, with not only a satiric thrust but a wealth of gritty, compassionate recognitions--as well as the knowledge that in poor neighborhoods, the dawn does not arise but merely ``flops'' and ``slinks.'' -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.