Lace by Shirley Conran

1980. In Manhattan’s most exclusive hotel, four friends come face to face with a young, mega-watt film star. She has a question for them that has brought her from the streets of Paris to the playgrounds of the rich and famous - and it has almost destroyed her…

Kate, Maxine, Judy and Pagan have soared to the top in fashion, PR and interior design. Now they are forced to look back at their lives: their wicked behaviour at school, the building of careers and the breaking of hearts. These women have never questioned their friendship, but now they must answer to Lili.

Lace is the book that every mother kept hidden from her daughter. Originally published in 1982, it is the debut novel from the million-copy bestselling author of Superwoman.

Lace was the Tsundoku Squad Book Group read for May. It’s a biggie at 750 pages, so we split this one into 5 parts seeing as there was an extra saturday in May. We had some great conversations during the month and it brought about a lot of topics we weren’t expecting. 

For starters we thought there would be a lot of sex, one or 2 of the group were a bit dubious going into it, and although there are a few graphic scenes, it wasn’t as much as we thought. The Goldfish was a very unwelcome surprise, and the cellar scene was a bit much.

The book is very outdated in certain ways, but it was advanced for its time in others. We were expecting an old book but it wasn’t what we got. The outdated parts were definitely not something that would be written today, being told to ignore your husband cheating was a big one, waking up to someone erm doing things to you and saying what a lovely way to wake up, I think you’ll find that’s assault. There were a lot of controversial topics in the book, and the opening chapter was a rough one. There was a big part in the middle involving Lily which was hard to read too and I think a lot of the group may have skimmed through that bit. Most of the men in the story are awful, but the book throws quite a surprise at you towards the end.

But there were good themes too, of strong women, beautiful friendships, and a lot of love. We all loved the friendship between the girls, they were always there for each other, fling across countries to help each other. It’s the kind of friendship you want in your life, maybe you haven’t seen each other in while, but you know if something is wrong, you will be there for each other.

There are strong triggers in this book, I won’t go into much detail but if you want to know these they will easily be found. Overall I gave Lace a 3 star, and Tsundoku collective was also a 3.

In the end I wasn’t sure how much I actually enjoyed it, but I did love the fact it brought up great conversation in book group. I’m glad I read it.

Check out Em’s collective group review here https://emandherbooks.com/2021/05/30/lace-shirly-conran-spoilers/