Businessmen as Lovers

by Rosemary Tonks

Fun, witty and sun-soaked – literary cartwheels and seaside capers from the astoundingly brilliant mid-century writer who destroyed her own books.

Great friends, Mimi and Caroline, are off on holiday to a beautiful Italian island. There they find themselves part of an eccentric cast of characters including their debonair host and his mistress, a relentless venture capitalist and a villain in the form of the local dentist. There is also Beetle, with whom Mimi is completely and simply in love. As everyone relaxes into island living and the demands of real life drift away, the holiday hijinks culminate in a very Mediterranean prank – the cutting down of the dentist’s prize lemon tree.

Back in print after many decades, this is a glorious novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Summer, Novels, Italy

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Rosemary Tonks (17 October 1928 – 15 April 2014) was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye after her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.

Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.

Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".

Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]

Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.

Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.

She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."

Reviews

[rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

is going on holiday with my rich friends worth marrying a finance bro

[Mariella · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐️

This book is 100% the biggest surprise of the year for me.
When I picked it up in a Berlin Bookshop it just looked to be a fun summer read and then it turns out that I just discovered the most hidden of gems.

The book is basically exactly what you'd expect from the blurp in terms of plot. What really surprised me about it was the bluntness and honesty of the author and the characters. The way they so openly talked about relationships and sex felt so inherently modern that most of the time I forgot that this book is almost 60 years old.
I loved the relationships the women had with each other because they were truly what I think good friendships ought to be and I love it when books portrait this.

All that being said the craziest part about this book is actually the author herself and I'd recommend reading into that more once you've read the book.

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I realised that the next book I would read was to be number 1000 on my Goodreads list, I thought perhaps I should read a big, important book; something that’s been staring at me from my shelf for years, like The Glass Bead Game or Crime and Punishment. But in my last week of school holidays, I chose the opposite – something short and fun.

Rosemary Tonks seems like she would’ve been a lot of fun to hang out with (that is, until she became a Christian Fundamentalist, turned her back on her writing career and tried to literally destroy everything she’d ever written, including her own books in public libraries!).

Businessmen as Lovers (1969) is the second of her novels that I’ve read (The Bloater (1968) is the other), and I’ve really enjoyed both works. I usually hate funny novels but Tonks’ observations, and her way with words, just work.

Like a lot of rather forgotten mid-century authors, it’s great that their books are now back in print. I’m looking forward to reading The Way Out of Berkeley Square (1970) and The Halt During the Chase (1972). Tonks is an interesting woman and worth investigating.

[Viccup]

Read this under the title "Love Amongst the Operators, A Novel." It reads like a giggly inside joke between friends.


"I don't mind her dying. Its the tragic sudden way it happened. You see hundreds of obituaries to lumpish businessmen or scientists with lantern jaws, but one of the most delicate, amusing women in Europe dies all alone and nobody writes an obituary to say : 'She made life more amusing for about a hundred people.'"

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

sharply written and great fun

[Zoe Lask · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
Rosemary Tonks writes high-brow romance novels. I mean that in the best way

[Anna Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosemary Tonks is like if Oscar Wilde was someone you actually wanted to hang out with. I think the Bloater is my favourite, but still some killer lines in this.

[libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

i would pay good money to have even half the charm that rosemary tonks possesses

[Isla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic summer adventure novel, disguising hidden elements of hierarchy through witty and complicated personal relationships. It felt very real, the characters were very tangible. Never a slow moment.

[Kate W · Rating 4 out of 5]

'You see hundreds of obituaries to lumpish businessmen or scientists with lantern jaws, but one of the most delicate, amusing woven in Europe dies all alone and nobody writes an obituary to say: "She made life more amusing for about a hundred people."'

Tasty, silly summer treat. Not a single thing happens. Delightful.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up; charming and ridiculous

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am baffled by the low star ratings for this little bit of genius. Rosemary Tonks (whose life story is also worth reading about; there’s a great episode of the podcast Backlisted about another novel of her’s called The Bloater) does two things incredibly well in this book: one, captures the inane, hilarious and very specific atmosphere of old friends on a trip together; and two, skewers white collar men ruthlessly. She does both of those things in a very funny, very short book that also gives a great sense of setting (an Italian island crawling with foreign visitors & expats).

[Bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would give this three stars bc the plot lost me a little (despite my love affair w books w no plot) but the writing is just TOO DAMN GOOD- girl’s IQ was high. Rosemary tonks may you rest in peace you funny funny woman

[Marta]

I took me more than a month to read 60 pages, and I had no idea what's going on the entire time

[Rahul Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Tonks last year when I was browsing books of English women writers who seemed to have disappeared. This year, I saw the book being read by readers here, and I thought that must be the signal for me to buy a copy and see if she’s going to be another favourite. This novella published in the 1960s is a naughty one. It is hilarious to the core and sexually proactive. We follow two friends entering middle age. Mimi and Caroline. These English women are off to a holiday in Italy. Caroline’s businessman husband and her kids are already there. Mimi is dating a man and enjoys sex with him to a great extent but wonders if Beetle is the right man to marry. Is there more to choosing a husband than his ability to provide great sex? Mimi often wonders; as they meet a ‘Prostitutess’ who smells of lust, beauty and power over men. Caroline is lost too because her husband is scarcely interested in her. Are businessmen as lovers a great deal? I found the plot quite engrossing given the time it was written in. The book does not shy away from its clear implications of woman’s controlled sexuality and the need to speak of it in a world, however terrible, but as a matter of factly. I loved the writing. Tonks has a charm over writing beautifully. It came as no surprise when I discovered that she was a poet first. There was the poetic charm and style to her prose. However, all said, the novel did not end up being a favourite that I could go mad over. I felt the jokes and attempts at being funny were more often than not deliberate and after a few giggles in the initial pages, I simply looked past it. They got lamer as the story progressed; or perhaps outdated! Alongside, the necessity to write humour came at a cost because the story felt weak. Tonks had set up a great ground for a very engrossing story but the characters got too muddled in being comical and hysterical to pay attention beyond it. I will still read more of Tonks. I thought this was not the best starting point for me. I loved the idea of the book and some parts of its execution, not all, alas.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

what a funny little book, can’t say all of the comedic references were entirely understood but I giggled here and there. very much giving rich finance bros and their wives playing private school style pranks on the main victim of the story the poor old dentist.
some pockets of really beautiful writing.

[Tilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quaint

[lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up - dying for a plot here

[Audrey Kang · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 short and sweet. picked it up in a cute cobalt blue bookshop in portugal

summery, fun, and with humor abound
many references and jokes, i think i got maybe half of them. it felt like going on vacation, and maybe being the quieter observer in a group of friends sharing inside jokes. plenty of pearls of wisdom in the way that only a woman in her 30s-40s can give, most very relevant even though the book is from almost 60 years ago

[lil · Rating 4 out of 5]

the wit and turns of phrase are so delightfully on the nose 🍋

[Tallulah Storm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The white lotus but 1960s bohemian intellectuals

[Chris Browning · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried, but I think the authorial voice and style just constantly and consistently rubbed me up the wrong way throughout. Clearly not for me

[Gabrielle Showalter · Rating 3 out of 5]

what if u were on a beautiful italian island BUT everyone there was a posh finance bro :(

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me so much of some of Nancy Mitford’s brilliant and satiric writings .
I loved this and wished that she’d written more . ( and that she didn’t regret her brilliance in later life )

[Thor Balanon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up on a whim after reading the blurb: “Everyone could do with a bit of Tonks in their lives.” And sold. I had no idea what to expect, but I ended up loving Businessmen as Lovers (1969). Rosemary Tonks has this wild, sharp way of writing people—not through tidy descriptions, but through mood, impulse, contradiction. Her characters are so eccentric and alive, especially Mimi, who nails the humor every time. The comedy is fast, clever, and just slightly unhinged. It’s like Wodehouse, but a little more chaotic, a little more knowing, and oddly glamorous.

There’s a brittle charm to the whole thing, like the characters are always on the verge of breakdown but are too well-dressed to admit it. There’s also a subtle melancholy underneath, a sense that these eccentric lives are stitched together by sheer force of personality.

Imagine holding it together purely out of spite and wit. (Or how I survive my day to day.)

[Minnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

still thinking about this one after the fact. This is a uniquely done work of fiction, a real british romp. fun and breezy, witty and different.

[Pauline Krupke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute aber random