Product Description

Can wrong ever become right? Does the end justify the means? For Celia Lytton, there are no easy answers to these questions. Strong-willed, tough, and courageous, she moves through life making difficult and often dangerous decisions both for herself and for others, with the most far reaching consequences for everyone . . . For her husband, Oliver, head of the great family publishing house of Lyttons; for Sylvia Miller, whose life of relentless poverty is transformed by Celia's intrusion; for Oliver's daunting elder sister, who is not all she appears to be; and for author Sebastian Brooke, for whom Celia makes the most dangerous decision of all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #213480 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Penny Vincenzi's No Angel is probably her most accomplished novel yet, and draws on many elements of the author's own life in journalism and publishing. Since inaugurating her writing career with Old Sins, Vincenzi has developed into one of the most stylish and compelling writers of blockbusting fiction with such novels as Another Woman, Forbidden Places, and Almost a Crime achieving phenomenal sales and a devoted readership that follows her work very closely.

Set in Lyttons, a great publishing house, this saga takes us into the lives of the family who owns it, and the dramas of crossed loyalties, ambition and deception inform a narrative that carries the reader along with great gusto. Vincenzi's canvas at the start of the book is the Edwardian era known as the Belle Époque, a time in which society contrasted hedonistic luxury and great social deprivation, with the First World War waiting in the wings to sweep so much away.

Celia Lytton is the firm-minded and ambitious wife of Oliver Lytton, the head of the publishing house that bears his name. Sylvia Miller, coming from a background of crushing poverty, is threatened by Celia's intrusion into her life, when Sylvia's youngest daughter is taken from the family to join the Lyttons and move in a different social circle. Sebastian Brooke, the author of a much-acclaimed children's book, finds himself both professionally and personally involved with the ambitious Celia.

This is the first volume in a series, The Spoils of Time, and Vincenzi sets out her stall impressively. We are very quickly involved in the larger-than-life experiences of these powerfully drawn characters, and as well as telling a thoroughly involving tale, the author is able to deal with some serious questions over good and evil. Most of all, it is her charismatic characters (such as the willful Celia) that make a lasting impression on the reader and the author's ability to keep the reader engrossed:

Celia had been right, Oliver was initially resistant to the risks of making love to her; but a mixture of emotional blackmail and a determined onslaught on his senses worked quite quickly. They found a physical delight in each other almost at once; Oliver was not exactly experienced, indeed his own knowledge had been gained at the hands of a couple of chorus girls introduced by his best friend at Oxford, but it was sufficient to guide him through Celia's initiation.

Review
From the author of Almost a Crime, this monster of a novel opens in 1904 and threads its way through to 1920. The well-off Beckenhams live an upper-crust lifestyle when it seems everyone else is having to scrimp and save. Oliver Lytton isn't posh enough for the Beckenhams, but Celia Beckenham has taken a shine to him, and Celia usually gets what she wants. It might be a match made in heaven, but World War I is about to break out. Watersheds are met, traditional roles exchanged and temptations fought. This, the first novel in what will be a series following the Lyttons, is not just a story about the upper classes: Vincenzi is not afraid to broach more difficult topics of the age such as socialism and sexuality. A gripping read. (Kirkus UK)

A first US appearance for British Vincenzi. (Overlook will also be publishing two of her previous novels: Something Dangerous and Into Temptation.) Celia, headstrong daughter of aristocratic Edwardian parents, makes the breakfast kippers spin in their silver chafing dish when she decides to marry . . . out of her class. The object of her affections is tall, blond, handsome Oliver Lytton, the offspring of a distinguished London publisher and a rather louche actress, long since decamped. Celia's outraged father points out that the man can't even ride a horse. Her practical mother adds that marriage is a business (but neglects to mention that she has been carrying on a clandestine affair for years with a friend of the family's). But Celia must and will have her way, and so she and Oliver marry, with only the family and a few loyal servants in attendance. Not the lavish society wedding Lady Beckenham had hoped for, but there's no time to waste-and Celia is delivered of Giles, a robust if ugly-looking infant, a mere six months after the ceremony. Yet there is trouble ahead, and ere long, a silver candlestick will be hurled at the nursery door. Celia is profoundly bored by the unchanging routine of motherhood, and she wants to work. Oliver demurs. "I want you to be in our home, taking care of our son, not out in the rough world of publishing." Then a collection of Queen Victoria's letters proves a temptation too powerful to resist, and Celia offers an utterly brilliant suggestion: Shall they publish a simultaneous biography? Lo, a dazzling career begins within the hallowed and fusty walls of Lyttons as our Celia swans it through the ensuing years of tremendous social upheaval, WWI, decorous infidelity with a sexy author, and other proliferating subplots too numerous to count. Studiously avoiding latent snobbery, Vincenzi rounds out this baggy saga with a few working-class characters, whose hearts are in the right place even if their aitches are not. Overlong and overwrought, though not without a certain veddy British charm. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Penny Vincenzi began her career as a junior secretary for Vogue and Tatler. She later worked as Fashion and Beauty Editor on magazines such as Women's Own, before becoming a contributing editor for Cosmopolitan. She has written ten previous novels.

Customer Reviews

A Magical Classic
This is the first volume of a series.
Set in the publishing house of the Lyttons. named after the Lytton family, Ms. Vincenzi's new classic takes us into the lives of the Lytton, the Beckenham and the Miller families just before World War II. Celia Lytton is the main character who takes over the helm of the family business as the country goes to war. A strong-willed woman, Celia displays her good business acumen and makes Lyttons a successful and competitive establishment. As the family men leave England to fight in the war, there are butterflies in the womens' stomachs each time as they worry if and whether they would ever see their loved ones again. There are powerful women in this book who take their responsibility, virtually heading their households, dispersing their children from London up to country homes away from the bombs, and establishing temporary shelters for the the wounded men who return from the war in despair, and some total incapacitated.
As the novel weaves it's intoxicating magic, you will meet Oliver Lytton, Celia's kind husband who becomes a tiresome and tempermental soul much to Celia's agitation, causing her to look elsewhere for love. You'll also meet Margaret Lytton, Oliver's sister who helps Celia manage the publishing house. Then of course there are Celia's twin daughters, Adele and Venetia; two playfully wicked girls; silent Giles and her adopted daughter Barty Miller. With exciting authors at the publishing house, especially one particular one who makes a marked impact on Celia Lytton's life, this plot twists and turns with the reader never knowing what will take place on the following page. A remarkable classic read which has me now waiting in limbo for the follow-up...as this story has by no means finished....just merely paused...awaiting the second volume.
It makes one wonderfuly anxious to see what will happen to these charming characters who the reader begins to care so much about. One has to be patient for the answers lie in SOMETHING DANGEROUS which should be out this month. Readers who have loved Penny Vincenzi's wonderful novels should order this compelling book soon. It's not to be missed. Check for yourself.

Heather Marshall

I was hooked from the first page!
This is my first experience reading a Penny Vincenzi novel and it won't be my last! I picked NO ANGEL up in a book store in Ireland while on vacation.The characters are fascinating and the sub plots are juicy! This book held my interest until the end . Its a great love story. I'm sorry Penny Vincenzi's books are not readly available in the USA.

Who wants to be an angel?
Indeed Celia is no angel - but she is a credible woman and hugely likeable despite/because of her compulsions. Before her time she might be, as is her Mother, but Vincenzi is convincing in her portrayal of a woman bursting and determined to escape the confines of the society into which she has been born. The reader can feel Celia's emotion and the torment she feels as a result of her own actions and partly as a reaction to the torture felt by Oliver on his return from war. If it is possible to love two men at the same time Vincenzi makes us feel that Celia can. This is a page-turner which keeps you on the edge and she slides effortlessly from one sub-plot to another and teases with the chapter endings which make you feel a conclusion is coming to a situation - only to find that the final sentence had applied to a different sub-plot. She misleads the reader endlessly, leaves you feeling a resolution, only to change the agenda - and how brilliantly she crafts this. I could almost sense her pleasure in doing this. Her research is magnificent and she transports you easily into Edwardian drawing rooms, tenements of poverty and injustice and the battlefields of suffering and wasted lives. Vincenzi takes your imagination and wrings it inside out. You barely have to make an effort to picture the period; she gives it to you with her vivid prose and ownership of the age. The dual morality of the time becomes a fundamental part of the novel and Celia tries to cross this. Vincenzi seems to me to be a 20th century mix of Henry James and Wilkie Collins with a touch of D.H.Lawrence's working class women thrown in in the character of Sylvia. Her style is different, her plots as complex, her message as clear and her use of language as clever in its description. In this novel she manipulates a woman at the start of the 20th century who wants and believes she can have it all. I felt so much for Celia even though she was no angel. I almost wanted her to have it all and could barely wait to finish it to see if she did - and to pass it on to my Mother who is waiting for it and who has become a big fan of Vincenzi too. I feel sorry for anyone who has not yet discovered this author - and hope they soon do. A novelist par excellence.