Praying Mantis - Hardcover

Taylor, Domini

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241121795 ISBN 13: 9780241121795

Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE, 1988

Synopsis

Born beautiful, unscrupulous Victoria Courtenay is determined to get whatever she wants in life, even if her insane ambition ruins the lives of her family and friends as well as her enemies. Reprint. PW.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The latest domestic chiller from the author of Mother Love stars Victoria Courtenay, beautiful, charming and depraved. Raised in genteel English poverty following WW II, she decides early on that she deserves the best, finding a means to that end in Gerald Bramall, a happily married squire but no match for a will, or a body, like Victoria's. After his wife's suicide, Gerald marries Victoria, and his two nearly grown children step out of his life. Victoria gives birth to Lottie, whom she despises, and Rienzo, whom she indulges to excess. Lottie leaves home at age 16; Rienzo kills himself in a car crash; Gerald dies conveniently. As her self-absorption plumbs new psychotic depths, Victoria looks for another mate to father the perfect child she knows she is meant to produce. The man she catches is Lottie's boyfriend, and the complex events that follow comprise the main narrative of this overwrought, heavy-handed tale. The action is compressed into the final third of the book and important questions--such as why Taylor's men are such amiable weaklings--are left unanswered.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Beautiful but deadly: an apt description of Victoria Courtenay Bramall Lambert, the physically lovely, morally destitute protagonist of this disjointed novel. Blessed with beauty and intelligence but no money, Victoria embarks early on in a career of manipulation to remedy this lack. She blithely uses people to get what she needs, then, in a quite literal sense, disposes of those who would interfere with her self-serving agenda. While the men she ensnares are so besotted, weak-willed, or stupid to elicit much sympathy, one does experience at least a twinge for daughter Lottie, whose sole failing is that she's female and is incapable of intimidation. An unappealing account of an unpleasant personality, the book's redeeming facet is that one of Victoria's selfish sycophants is unintentionally responsible for her ultimate downfall.
- Judith A. Gifford, Salve Regina Coll. Lib., Newport, R.I.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0241121795
• ISBN 13: 9780241121795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1