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It is an accident that Susan Rose, the ambitious and beautiful young writer, is invited to the society wedding of the year; an accident that she meets Mike Browne, war hero and heir to an eastern fortune. It doesn't take them long to realize that they are unique-vital, flippant, and passionate. The year is 1946. By 1956, half a dozen of the fourteen people in the wedding party are dead, fatalities of postwar luxury and high living.
After a dashing courtship, Susan, the wrong girl, and Mike, the right boy, marry, despite family objections and to the surprise of his friends. Soon the Barnard scholarship girl from the Upper West Side emerges as Susannah Browne, the most original hostess of the new smart set. She amd Mike settle down to a life of elegance and glamour. But under the surface, life is not so sweet. There are other women, fights, reconciliations, and a son born during a near divorce. Finally an accident-of love? of hatred? of jealousy?-opens Susannah's entire life to question and brings this compelling chronicle of cafe society's darker side to its conclusion.
Mary Ellin Barrett has captured the romance, snobbery, and scandal of the life of the rich and powerful in the 1950's. Nostalgic, biting and intelligent, and perfect in its details, "An Accident of Love" pulls the reader into the exciting, magical world of the international set, a modern equivalent of "Tender Is the Night." |
