Review: Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

Anatomy of a Scandal is a well written legal drama with a he said-she said premise. Kate is a hard working lawyer for the crown who has tackled many high profile cases. When James, a spoiled and charismatic politician with an Oxford background, is accused of rape, Kate is keen to see justice served. Meanwhile, James' wife Sophie wholeheartedly believes that her husband is telling the truth. Anatomy of a Scandal is sure to keep readers wondering, while the truth is fed bit by bit to the reader. 

I have no doubt that there is going to be a lot of talk about this novel in weeks to come. This novel is an intelligently written story of wealth, bad behaviour and an unhealthy fixation. None of the characters are perfect--Kate, James and Sophie all have multiple failings. James is as sexist as Sophie is spoiled and weak, and Kate is obsessed with ensuring that James is convicted--and something seems horribly personal about her fixation. There are also some deeper secrets at play regarding James' time at Oxford that weave perfectly into the story and make the drama all the more intense. 

It is difficult to say that I enjoyed this one--the subject matter is quite dark, and is perhaps more topical than enjoyable, given that it examines in detail just how much men in positions of power can get away with. What I did appreciate was the opportunity to think about the subject matter and relate it to a number of real life cases.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Ausrtalia for my ARC


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more