Notting Hell

EVERY CITY HAS A NOTTING HELL . . .

"A spot of extramarital nookie with a close neighbor is one thing. We're all grown-ups here. But selling a rare-to-the-market mid-Victorian house — not merely a house but our children's ancestral family home — on a communal garden, the sort of house that a banker would trample over his own grandmother to spend his bonus on — is another thing entirely. It's wrong."

Meet Mimi. Mimi may "have it all" — the house, the children, the part-time vanity job, the skinny jeans, the feng shui guru — but life chez Fleming is not as cushy as she'd like (husband Ralph prefers the trout stream to the fast lane). And when Mimi meets Si, the new billionaire on the block, at a sushi party, she soon faces a choice of keeping up or keeping it real.

Then there's her best friend Clare, neat-freak garden designer, deep in biopanic about her childlessness with eco-architect husband, Gideon. Clare monitors all illicit activity in the private West London compound, from light adultery to heavy construction, and she is watching Mimi. . . .

Notting Hell is a wickedly funny and oh-so-recognizable comedy of manners, filleting life on a communal garden in London. So take your irreplaceable numbered key and enter Lonsdale Gardens, the world of wealthy one-upmanship, where the old-fashioned laws of love still rule among the stainless steel kitchen appliances, cashmere throws, and compassionately produced cups of latte.

INCLUDES

"Notting Hill for Beginners," a witty guide to the must-haves and must knows of Notting Hill

EVERY CITY HAS A NOTTING HELL . . .

"A spot of extramarital nookie with a close neighbor is one thing. We're all grown-ups here. But selling a rare-to-the-market mid-Victorian house — not merely a house but our children's ancestral family home — on a communal garden, the sort of house that a banker would trample over his own grandmother to spend his bonus on — is another thing entirely. It's wrong."

Meet Mimi. Mimi may "have it all" — the house, the children, the part-time vanity job, the skinny jeans, the feng shui guru — but life chez Fleming is not as cushy as she'd like (husband Ralph prefers the trout stream to the fast lane). And when Mimi meets Si, the new billionaire on the block, at a sushi party, she soon faces a choice of keeping up or keeping it real.

Then there's her best friend Clare, neat-freak garden designer, deep in biopanic about her childlessness with eco-architect husband, Gideon. Clare monitors all illicit activity in the private West London compound, from light adultery to heavy construction, and she is watching Mimi. . . .

Notting Hell is a wickedly funny and oh-so-recognizable comedy of manners, filleting life on a communal garden in London. So take your irreplaceable numbered key and enter Lonsdale Gardens, the world of wealthy one-upmanship, where the old-fashioned laws of love still rule among the stainless steel kitchen appliances, cashmere throws, and compassionately produced cups of latte.

INCLUDES

"Notting Hill for Beginners," a witty guide to the must-haves and must knows of Notting Hill

Publishers Weekly

This veddy droll through-the-keyhole debut from British columnist Johnson is drenched in the mores and manners of London's West Village equivalent plus or minus a few trustafarians and maybe a few titles. Married to an "ecotect" and speeding childlessly toward middle age, Clare is a dilettante who dabbles in feng shui gardening when she isn't keeping an ovulation diary and minding everyone else's business on the back garden shared by her square block. Her frenemy, Mimi, is a 37-year-old freelance journalist who is married to Ralph (a freelance energy consultant and pundit) and Mummy to three posh kids and a dog. As the two alternate first-person chapters, Clare spots a scantily clad neighbor's wife sneaking out of the wrong house in the predawn darkness, while Mimi contemplates relieving her malignant ennui by hopping into bed with their new billionaire bachelor neighbor, Si Kasparian. ("Money isterribly sexy," she notes.) What follows are pages of brand- and name-dropping, boring hesitations and recriminations, untrustworthy billionaire behavior and Clare discovering her husband has taken an opposing side on a contentious garage renovation. Lacking the emotional depth of Anna Maxted and the strategic bling-command of Jackie Collins, this semisatire gets lost somewhere in between. (Apr.)

Rachel Johnson is one of the most high-profile and popular female journalists in the UK, with columns in the London Evening Standard, The Sunday Times, and Easy Living. She lives in Notting Hill, London, and Somerset with her husband and three children.