Showbiz

Paperback Choice

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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Birdsong was romance and war. Charlotte Gray was romance and spying. On Green Dolphin Street is romance and the run-up to the 1959 US presidential election campaign.

Mary van der Linden is the feisty-yet-feminine wife of boozy Washington diplomat Charlie. She adores her husband, despite his flaws (barely a page goes by without Charlie washing down his Tylenol with a few dozen martinis and a triple whisky chaser). Yet she starts a passionate affair with a hack called Frank who's covering the Kennedy camp.

It's this affair that won Faulks a well-deserved nomination at last year's Bad Sex Awards (he won in 1998 for Charlotte Gray). He really shovels it on - silk stockings, moody jazz ("Did you hear that Kind of Blue record?" Frank asks) and an endless supply of cigarettes. It's choking stuff that makes you wish Faulks had stuck to the politics.

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Diplomacy
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