FICTION
Collins glitters without the raunch
The cover of Jackie Collins’ “Married Lovers” is scandalously red and sparkling and tells readers everything they need to know about what’s inside: glamour and seduction.
Collins’ latest piece of literary junk food, the follow-up to her 25 New York Times best sellers including “Drop Dead Beautiful,” won’t disappoint her readers on most counts.
In fact, her sister on best-seller lists, Danielle Steele, should probably hold on to her hat — readers might be outgrowing simple romance and craving what reality TV has fed us by the bowlful: fabulous parties and movie stars.
Stark seduction just doesn’t cut it anymore and that’s what makes “Married Lovers” better than average. Collins includes enough raunch — a high-class bachelor party in New Amsterdam, for example — to own up to the almost-too-much title, but doesn’t strive to make you blush if reading in public.
Cameron Paradise, her young, ambitious fitness trainer to the stars, has the beauty, the body and the mysterious past to attract hot-shot talk show host Don Verona.
Still, she pines after Don’s married best friend Ryan from their first encounter onward. Collins’ rich and famous characters, living in huge Hollywood homes, tend to be tediously transparent, with the exception of Don who is actually quite likable. Cameron, on the other hand, is supposed to be 24, and opening a high-end fitness studio seems a task beyond her years, despite the quick dialogue and Collins’ endless tributes to her “intelligence.”
Collins never offers anything particularly innovative. She does compel one to read her newest book, though, by using alternating chapters about a Russian prostitute whose tragedy eventually becomes intertwined with the destinies of everyone else. If, at first, Anya, Collins’ sex-slave turned “Sex and the City” fanatic, seems to add some depth to the novel, she eventually becomes another yet indicator that, to Jackie Collins, money and sex are the most important parts of life: who has them, where do they get them and how much do they have.
But then the debaucherous lives of the rich and famous have always had their appeal, as does Collins’ hefty novel.
Her practice, on the other hand, of inserting real movie and music stars among the made up bunch feels phony. She’d be better off keeping to fiction and not dating the content.
Blending materialism and soap-opera complications can’t be easy, and Collins combines them well enough for a lazy late-summer afternoon in the hammock.
“Married Lovers”, then, is fictional cotton candy — sweet and satisfying, however synthetic.
Married Lovers By Jackie Collins St. Martin’s Press 512 pages, $26.95
Kristen Rajczak is a News summer intern.
