Product Description

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest and the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin career, she set her sights on the male-dominated heights of the conductor's rostrum. Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby is ecstatic, not realising the RSO is in hock up to its neck and is composed of the wildest bunch of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle. Abby finds it increasingly difficult to control her undisciplined rabble and pretend she is not madly attracted to the fatally glamorous horn player, Viking O'Neill, who claims droit de seigneur over every pretty woman joining the orchestra. And then Rannaldini, arch-fiend and international maestro, rolls up with Machiavellian plans of his own to sabotage the RSO. Effervescent as champagne, Jilly Cooper's novel brings back old favourites like Rupert and Taggie Campbell-Black, but also ends triumphantly with a rampageous orchestral tour of Spain and the high drama of an international piano competition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26936 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 896 pages

Sunday Express
‘Delicious: light as a souffle and with divine flashes of wit. I could not put the damned thing down’

Daily Express
'Sexy, dazzling protagonists…the humour comes thick and fast’

Tatler
‘Triumphant...a boisterous tale of sex and Chopin amongst Rutshire folk’

Customer Reviews

Dismal
Usually I like Jilly Coopers work but the central figure in this book, Abigail Rosen is such an awful character that I just couldn't be bothered to finish. What on earth induced the author to invent a 'heroine' that is as unlikeable, vicious and bitchy as this one, and then expect us to care about what happened to her? A dismal failure.

Wonderful
As the other reviwers have complained, this book might not be up to Jilly's others and possibly be the start of a downward curve but even Jilly on a bad day is still better than any other female writer around. This book, like her others, is a great big thick doorstopper of a novel and yet from page one I simply couldn't put it down. It's bursting with energy, characters, witty one-liners, sexy scenes, romance, friendship, all tangling up in a wonderful joie de vivre. Despite her countless imitators, there's nothing like reading the real thing. Her heroes are fantastic -they are handsome, dashing etc, but also human, and she avoids the sort of Mills & Boon cliches you'd expect in this sort of novel. In fact, all of her characters are brilliantly and vividly drawn in bright brush-strokes, and it's impossible to dislike any of them. Behind the novel is a feeling that the author had a great time writing the novel, and I had a great time reading it!

Appassionata, amazing!!
My eyes have been glued to this book, it is one you cant put down until the last page, and then you're upset that its finished, but realise its one book in a great series.

I love the way it brings in all the characters we know and love so much, and gives you a chance to see how Marcus has developped into a young man. Jilly hasnt't put the emphasis on sex so much in this book, which gives it a more serious edge and is very touching with the way Marcus deals with his sexuality.

I loved it so much my friends bought me Polo to start the next day.

Long Live Jilly Cooper books.