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Overview
"Wickedly funny."
—Kirkus
A witty, beloved novel of heart and heartland, Farm Fatale skewers the culture clash of city vs. country in the snappy, observant style that made Wendy Holden famous.
Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a country cottage. Rampant nouveaux riches Samantha and Guy are also searching for rustic bliss—in the biggest mansion money can buy. The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive rock star, a glamorous Bond Girl, and a ghost with a knife in its back. But there are unexpected thrills in the hills, and Rosie is rapidly discovering that country life isn't so simple after all.
"This lighthearted romp, surprisingly unpredictable, smart, and fun, is refreshing fare readers can turn to."
—Publishers Weekly
"Every character here is deliciously ridiculous, and every rustic detail a grand satirical opportunity."
—Baltimore Sun
"Wendy Holden writes with delicious verve and energy."
—Mail on Sunday
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781402255526 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sourcebooks |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 765,636 |
| File size: | 837 KB |
About the Author
Wendy Holden was a journalist for The Sunday Times,Tatler and The Mail on Sunday before becoming a full-time author. She has now published nine novels, all being top-10 bestsellers in the UK, and is married with two young children. Her novels include Farm Fatale, Bad Heir Day, Simply Divine, Gossip Hound, The Wives of Bath,The School for Husbands, Azur Like it, and Filthy Rich.
Wendy Holden (UK) was a journalist on the Sunday Times, Tatler, and The Mail on Sunday before becoming a full time author. She has now published nine novels, all top 10 bestsellers in the UK. Her novels include Beautiful People, Farm Fatale, Simply Divine, Gossip Hound, The Wives of Bath, The School for Husbands, Azur Like it, and Filthy Rich.
Read an Excerpt
Bang on 8 am, the car alarm that had been shrieking all night finally stopped. After a two-second pause, the road drills began. Rosie could hold back no longer.
"Mark? You know we've been talking about moving to the countryside..."
"You've been talking about it, you mean," corrected Mark, hunched over his bowl of Cheerios and flicking rapidly through the newspapers. "I don't believe it." He groaned.
"I know." Rosie pressed her hands to her ears. "They only dug up that patch a week ago. Something to do with cable TV..."
"Not that," said Mark, his spoon dripping milk as he shook it at the center spread of a tabloid. "This. The Mail's got Matt Locke. We've been trying to get him for ages."
"Who's Matt Locke?"
Mark looked at her, exasperated. "Honestly, you're like that judge who asked 'Who is Gazza?' Don't you ever read the papers?"
"You know I don't. Apart from the horoscopes." No doubt, Rosie thought, she was missing something, but she failed to share the awe with which Mark regarded newspapers in general and his job on one in particular. After all, it wasn't as if he was setting the national agenda, exposing Nazis, or bringing corrupt politicians to book. As far as Rosie could make out, Mark's job as assistant editor on a Sunday lifestyle section mostly involved rewriting other people's articles-"tickling up" as he called it-and attempting to persuade celebrities to give interviews about everything from their cystitis (for "Disease of the Week") to the contents of their refrigerator (for the "Chillin'" slot).
"Matt Locke, m'lud," Mark explained with elaborate patience, "is an extremely successful singer. The chisel-cheeked champion of howling rock 'n' roll angst, he burst on the scene two years ago with the number one platinum album Posh Totty, an epoch-making elegy to soaring strings, gutsy guitar, melancholy blues, and a touch of country and western, following it up with the even more successful What Did Your Last One Die Of ? Then, at the height of his fame, he crashed and burned amid claims that the stress was too much."
"Oh," said Rosie, peering at the newspaper photograph of a girlish-looking youth with elaborately tousled hair and huge lips. He did not look particularly stressed. Actually, he looked half asleep. She winced as the road drills outside changed to an even more brain-penetrating key. "Darling, you know you said you'd think about it. The countryside, I mean."
"Recycled interviews, of course," Mark muttered, pressing his nose almost against the newspaper. "Nothing that's not been printed before. Apart from these aerial pictures of Matt in his garden, although they're so blurry, it's probably one of the gnomes."
"Two-thirds of people living in cities want to live in the country," Rosie persevered, hoping she'd remembered the figures properly. "Thousands are migrating every month."
"So if we stay in London," Mark said flippantly, "everyone else will eventually leave, house prices will go down, and we'll end up with a mansion on Regent's Park Road."
"Oh, Mark."
"Look," Mark said, putting the newspaper down at last. "I know I said last night that I'd think about it, but it was the wine speaking. I don't want to leave London. I'm a townie born and bred. Crowds and noise are my lifeblood; filth is my friend. I can't breathe anything but carbon monoxide. A landscape of brutalist shopping precincts, down-at-the-heel Tube stations, and municipal concrete bunkers is the only sort of scenery I have time for. Besides," he added, stretching with satisfaction, "I'm going to be promoted. At long last, the paper's going to give me a column of my own."
"It is? But you never mentioned that last night."
"Well, it's not quite sorted out yet."
"So it's still 'Driving Miss Daisy' for the moment?"
The main column in Mark's section, "Driving Miss Daisy," recorded the adventures of Househusband, a stay-at-home father who looked after his infant daughter, Daisy, while his wife, a successful futures trader, went to work. Desperate for a column of his own, Mark despised the weekly chore of extracting the material out of Househusband and writing up the results himself. The fact that Househusband was incapable of stringing a sentence together, much less coming up with ideas, was, as Mark often savagely pointed out, not unconnected to the fact that he was the brother-in-law of the paper's editor.
Mark's brows drew together crossly. "For the moment, yes. But
they've obviously given me that to train me for better things." He
raked a hand through his rumpled golden hair. "Rosie, I can't leave.
I'm on the brink of a promising career."
"Look," she said persuasively. "Why don't you ask the paper for a writing contract? Or go freelance, if they won't do it. You'd enjoy it much more. We could live anywhere we liked then. You can't really want to stay here." The hand she waved at their rented flat's dustbloomed windows jerked involuntarily as a backfiring car joined the shrilling symphony of drills. "Imagine: Clean air. Cottages with roses round the door. Sun-dappled country lanes, empty of traffic." Mark merely shrugged at this. Her dreams, Rosie realized miserably, were not his. In which case, she'd target his nightmares, namely the dentist and going bald. "Water that doesn't cause tartar buildup behind your teeth. Rain that's clean and doesn't poison your hair follicles." As he still looked unimpressed, she added desperately, "Struggling into the office on the crappy, broken-down old Tube with your face pushed into someone's bottom. Or armpit."
"You don't have to struggle on the Tube anyway," Mark cut in self-righteously. "You're a freelance illustrator. You can lie around all day if you want."
Rosie rolled her eyes but refrained from pointing out that the endless illustrations for the food and horoscope pages of various glossy magazines in which she seemed to have become a specialist left little time for bon-bons on the couch. The fact that paintings of scallops and Scorpio were relatively poorly paid was, Rosie thought, another argument in favor of the move. Her fees would go further in the country.