Book Review | Post-war England comes back to life with intrigue and fashion

Philadelphia Inquirer, The, May, 2006

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets By Eva Rice

Dutton. 352 pp. $24.95

Reviewed by Susan Hall-Balduf

Eva Rice's charming but flawed debut novel, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, doesn't have many. Few of the plot points come as a surprise, and the characters are unpredictable only when they are inconsistent.

The charm of the novel, though, is its pitch-perfect presentation of the frantic glamour of 1950s England. Rationing, the final holdover of World War II, has ended at last, and the shops are full of heavily promoted things one simply must have: beautiful hats and gloves and nylon stockings!

Smart girls who want lots of things are on the lookout for rich husbands, though much wealth is in the pockets of those vulgar Americans buying up the big houses in order to redecorate them with appalling taste.

Narrator Penelope Warren would be much ...