{"id":7958,"date":"2019-05-20T06:12:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T10:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7958"},"modified":"2019-05-20T11:13:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T15:13:40","slug":"envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7958","title":{"rendered":"***Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Amanda Robson \u2013The suburban London borough of Twickenham is home to the upwardly mobile young couple Faye and Phillip and their two daughters. Thirty-four year old Faye cuts a striking figure, walking the older girl to school and dropping in on the agent who occasionally finds her modeling jobs. She\u2019s beautiful, thin, and, to all appearances, has her world well put together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those appearances are carefully noted by Erica, a neighbor\nin a rental flat who is overweight, insecure, and has little going on in her\nlife. Before long, Erica\u2019s preoccupation with Faye moves beyond watching; she\nbegins following her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divided into short chapters, the novel is told from the\nalternating points of view of Erica, Faye, Faye\u2019s husband Phillip, and their\narchitect friend Jonah who\u2019s in charge of Faye and Phillip\u2019s loft conversion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early on, we learn about cracks in Faye\u2019s fa\u00e7ade when she\nvisits the modeling agency and learns she\u2019s been turned down for a job because\nthe client wants someone younger. At a party where she meets a top modeling\nagent, he won\u2019t even take her card. He says over-contrived looks are out of\nfashion. Faye is devastated until friend Jonah appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his first-person sections, Jonah makes clear his motive\nis not friendship, but seduction. He plies Faye with alcohol and flattery,\nsoothing her insecurities. In a \u2018why doesn\u2019t she see this coming\u2019 moment, he\npersuades her to go home with him and they have an uninhibited night of sex.\nWhen she wakes in the morning, Faye is horrified and slips away unobserved\u2014except\nby Erica, that is. Erica becomes convinced Faye is irresponsible and a bad\nmother and that she can be the young girls\u2019 savior. Despite her delusions, she\nremains a sympathetic character, with a nice character arc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faye is aghast at what she\u2019s done and determined to keep\nPhillip from finding out. Ah, once again, secrets are the fuel that propel the\nplot forward. Jonah is not backing off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots goes wrong from here on out, as the pressure on Faye increases to an excruciating point. While Erica is a convincing adversary, as a young woman without advantages who lets herself be inhabited by a foolish fantasy, Jonah is not. You may not fully believe in him and his smarmy descriptions of the sex he and Faye had. It would be a stronger book if his character inspired the kind of divided loyalty Erica does. You still kind of root for her, despite her missteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo: yeniguel for Pixabay. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amanda Robson \u2013The suburban London borough of Twickenham is home to the upwardly mobile young couple Faye and Phillip and their two daughters. Thirty-four year old Faye cuts a striking figure, walking the older girl to school and dropping … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"***Envy - a \"plain Jane's\" obsession with her glamorous neighbor and her perfect life reveals all kinds of secrets","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,126,66,32],"tags":[1564,1565,1566],"class_list":["post-7958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-suspense","category-thriller","tag-amanda-robson","tag-envy","tag-psychological-thrilller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/window-blind.jpg?fit=411%2C359&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2NkiT-envy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7961,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958\/revisions\/7961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}