(U.S. Title - The Perfect Happiness)
‘From the outset, Angelica Lariviere lives a charmed life. A best-selling author, she has the perfect home, a beautiful family, glamorous friends and a very healthy bank balance.
But lothario Jack turns her world upside down - and their harmless flirting soon becomes a full-blown affair.
Seduced by the passion and sincerity, readers will find themselves sucked into - and approving of - the pair's illicit relationship.
And with much of the novel set against the stunning back drop of South Africa, it will provide some much needed escapism on a cold winter's night.
That is until Jack drops a bombshell - forcing Angelica to reassess her life all over again and unexpectedly changing the story's course.
Bittersweet and thought-provoking, the Affair is essentially escapist chick-lit, but brilliantly written and surprisingly sophisticated’.
News of the World, 2010
‘Angelica is a bestselling Children's author who lives in London with her banker husband and children, and lunches regularly with her Sex in the City-esque clique of girlfriends. The she meets Jack, a rugged charming South African who makes her feel desirable in the way her husband no longer can.
One source of the lovers' mutual attraction is their shared search for what they call "the perfect happiness". Drawn to Jack's belief in living for the moment, Angelica reveals to him her secret ambition to give her next book a deeper layer, something that had a message about the meaning of life - an aim apparently shared by Santa Montefiore herself.
After many chapters of procrastination and email flirtation - including a painfully strung-out analogy for infidelity involving dogs on porches - they begin affair in earnest. The London scenes are gossipy and entertaining enough, but it's only when Angelica visits South Africa that the writing begins to sing. Landscapes are this author's forte and her descriptions of the jasmine-scented air at Jack's vineyard outside Cape Town are accomplished and poetic.
The dramatic high point is a brutal burglary at the vineyard, and for a paragraph or two Montefiore touches on the disparity between rich and poor, seeming poised to say something significant about the pursuit of happiness in such a world. But it is soon clear that the incident is a handy plot device to prompt Jack to confess the reason behind his carpe diem ethos, and to shock Angelica into remembering how much she loves her husband, who remains conviniently oblivious to her adultery.
This is where the book falls short - not because it fails to address some of life's big questions, but because the answers it comes up with are superficial, an affair can bring you happiness if you get away with it, the author seems to be saying. And even if your lover has a tragic secret that brings things to a premature end, it’s nothing Bellini and s blow-dry can’t mend’.
The Daily Telegraph, 2010
Angelica is a woman who has it all: an attractive French husband, a career as a best-selling children’s author and loads of money but Olivier, the husband, works in the Cit and the encroaching credit crisis is occupying him and making him neglectful. So, when she meets a handsome South African, Jack, at a dinner party, she is ripe for the picking.
Santa Montefiore is a marvel at descriptive writing and the two milieus she establishes, the grand drawing rooms of rich London filled with designer-clad women and the lush South African veldt, have you drooling. She’s very sympathetic to her characters, too: Angelica is never praised for what she is doing but neither is she condemned. “Have you ever been tempted?” asks the cover of the book. Well, of course.
This book is really a description of a midlife crisis of a kind only the really lucky have: everything is so perfect that surely there must be something more? Angelica is, ultimately, brought up short by the potential repercussions of her actions and nor, rather bleakly, are the lovers given a happy ending. It doesn’t happen in life and neither, in this case, in art.
The most intriguing character is Anna, Jack’s wife, a near-saintly figure who knows exactly what is going on but makes no attempt to interfere because she and Jack do not possess one another. This is a tale of middle-aged angst, yearning and longing and the fact that we must all, ultimately, accept real life.
Sunday Express, 2010
