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Lace
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Four elegant, successful, and sophisticated women in their forties are called to New York's Pierre Hotel to meet Lili -- a beautiful, young, and notoriously temperamental Hollywood movie star. None of the women knows exactly why she is there; each has a reason to hate Lili and each of them is astonished to see the others. They are old friends who share a guilty secret and who have for years been doing their best to keep that secret quiet. Their lives are changed forever, however, when Lili suddenly confronts them. When the women refuse to answer her, Lili proceeds to travel around the world through the playgrounds of the rich and famous, seeking to answer the question that has obsessed and almost destroyed her. From Paris to London, from the boardroom to the bedroom, Lace takes the reader into the rarified world of five unforgettable women who are as beautiful, as complex and as strong as...lace.
752 pages, Paperback
Published August 7, 2007
411 people are currently reading
5258 people want to read
About the author
Shirley Conran
50 books113 followersShirley Conran is the ex-wife of British designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer Sir Terence Conran. She is the mother of designers Sebastian Conran and Jasper Conran. A bestselling author in her own right whose most memorable books include Lace and Superwoman.
She was educated at the University of Portsmouth. In addition to novel writing, she wrote regularly for The Observer newspaper's women's page and was the first women's editor of The Observer Colour Magazine and women's editor of The Daily Mail newspaper where she launched the weekly women's magazine 'Femail'. She also has great experience as a designer in textiles and as a colour consultant - she had her own paint range. She handled the publicity for the Women in Media Campaign devoted to sex discrimination legislation. She was on the selection committee of the Council of Industrial Design for eight years. She also has been a columnist for Vanity Fair (magazine).
Shirley Conran is well known for having said: "First things first, second things never".
She was successfully treated for skin cancer several years ago.
She has homes in France and London.
She was educated at the University of Portsmouth. In addition to novel writing, she wrote regularly for The Observer newspaper's women's page and was the first women's editor of The Observer Colour Magazine and women's editor of The Daily Mail newspaper where she launched the weekly women's magazine 'Femail'. She also has great experience as a designer in textiles and as a colour consultant - she had her own paint range. She handled the publicity for the Women in Media Campaign devoted to sex discrimination legislation. She was on the selection committee of the Council of Industrial Design for eight years. She also has been a columnist for Vanity Fair (magazine).
Shirley Conran is well known for having said: "First things first, second things never".
She was successfully treated for skin cancer several years ago.
She has homes in France and London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 395 reviews
March 6, 2013
The first time I read this I was 11 years old (yes, really) because I had finished reading the stack of books I'd taken out of the library and, as I often did when I sped through my tower of borrowed books, I stole a book off of my parents' shelves.
This was hardly shocking to me at 11, until I got the chapter where the Arab prince is pleasuring his concubine, and that image has since stayed with me in a weird way. I learned about things reading books that were not meant for me long before I should've known any of these things. Even now I'm not sure I ever needed half of that information.
That being said, the book is entertaining. It's got that overly dramatic, shoulder-padded glamour that embodied the 80's and it's fun to delve into the scandalous lives of these women and their adventures through life.
Though it's been a while since the last time I've read this, I remember it being a fun and campy ride and is a great companion to your fancy umbrella drink as you lounge poolside.
This was hardly shocking to me at 11, until I got the chapter where the Arab prince is pleasuring his concubine, and that image has since stayed with me in a weird way. I learned about things reading books that were not meant for me long before I should've known any of these things. Even now I'm not sure I ever needed half of that information.
That being said, the book is entertaining. It's got that overly dramatic, shoulder-padded glamour that embodied the 80's and it's fun to delve into the scandalous lives of these women and their adventures through life.
Though it's been a while since the last time I've read this, I remember it being a fun and campy ride and is a great companion to your fancy umbrella drink as you lounge poolside.
May 5, 2013
Sjajna visokokvalitetna komercijalna ženska knjiga... aktuelna i zanimljiva i 30 godina posle originalnog objavljivanja... I sjajna ekranizacija... Čipke... :)
October 17, 2025
Sometimes you just need a trashy, controversial read, and boy did this book deliver. 🫢 (extended thoughts & scandalous quotes below)
I heard about this book in Blurb Your Enthusiasm, where author Louise Willder describes Lace as having one of the greatest lines in the history of the written word: Which one of you bitches is my mother?
Willder also says it represents the zenith of the "bonkbuster" genre (which I've never heard of).
bonkbuster: A term coined in the 1980s to describe a novel with explicit content, turbulent drama, and high-stakes content. The word blends "blockbuster" and "bonk" (slang for having sex). FUN!
Curiosity got the better of me, so I'm giving this one a read. It's a whopping 742 pages, so I'm counting it toward PROJECT TOME (in which I strive to read the behemoths in my collection).
PROLOGUE
Nothing says controversial like kicking things off with a 13-year-old girl getting an illegal abortion. 🫣
CHP 01
Maxine (age 47) travels with douches and suppositories. Clearly she likes order more than comfort. 😅
Judy (age 45) succeeded in life quickly against the odds. She leads a glamorous life yet likes to be thought of as warm-hearted and hard working. 💼
Pampered Pagan (age 46) never so much as takes sleeping pills or other medicine, not even aspirin. She's terrified of getting hooked again. 💊
Kate (age 46) is a successful magazine editor and but still must live up to her father's expectation that she be on at the top of the pile. 📖
All four women have been invited by superstar Lili to a secret meeting, for what reason, they have no idea.
💥AND THERE'S THE ICONIC LINE: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" 💥
Something tells me this is gonna be good. 🍿
CHP 02
Wait, WHAT?! ⁉️ Is this seriously happening? 🫣 Did Pagan's mom just... ? To KATE? 🫢 OMG.
CHP 04
Why does everything bad happen to Kate? 😭
Maxine is getting some action, but WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE COULD "SMELL HIS DESIRE"? 👃
OMG... 🫢 What happens to Pagan is horrific.
👉 Let's do a 100 page check-in: I feel like I'm reading a Danielle Steele novel written for a YA audience (in a good way).
CHP 05
Kind of loving how (French) Maxine's cursing is written:
👉 Let's do a 200 page check-in: Admittedly, the last few chapters centered on Judy's burgeoning career in fashion were a little slow. I'd like less clothes and more scandal, please and thank you.
CHP 15
So there I was, thinking I was reading a lovely story of young Lili growing up in the Hungarian countryside, but NO. Suddenly it's all Russian invasion and running for their lives and the most horrific conclusion to the chapter, which sees.... . 🫢😭
CHP 17
Maxine getting kinky, IN PUBLIC! Reaching an explosive climax like "a cork bursting from a bottle of champagne." Go, girl! 🍾💥
CHP 19
Maxine's living the good life remodeling a French château to transform it into a lucrative hotel, but her husband is kind of a freak? He demands that she not wear underwear so he can get at her goods whenever he wants (hence, she's always doing it in public).
🌶️ HOT OR NOT? 🚫 - Maxine defies her husband's demand that she not wear underwear, and when he finds out, this happens:
Apparently Maxine likes it, so... 🤷♀️
CHP 23
HOLY SMOKES! Some serious drama playing out between Kate, her fiancé Robert, and Pagan...
CHP 25
Oh... OH MY GOSH. I have arrived at the infamous goldfish scene. 😵💫 I can't even with this...
Like, WHAT?⁉️
I'M TRAUMATIZED 😭😭😭
CHP 26
Poor Pagan. 🍇😢
CHP 28
Happy to report that Pagan & Kate...
I've just realized that I probably should have been trying to figure out which woman is Lili's biological mother. 😶 I'm ruling out Pagan because her husband accused her of being unable to have children, and I think a post-pregnancy belly would have given away that she'd had a child before. 🤔
CHP 29
OMG, Pagan's new guy is MAKING LOVE TO HER ARMPIT?!?! ⁉️ Making love, as in, paying arduous attention to it with his tongue, but still... 👅🤢
LIKE A SEAGULL. 🤣
CHP 30
Oh man... Pagan's guy had a massive heart attack, and now he can't have sex anymore. EVER. Pretty sure that's not a thing. 🤔 Maybe he's just tired of licking her armpit? 🤷♀️
👉 Let's do a 400 page check-in: SO MUCH DRAMA! LOVING IT! 🙌
CHP 32
OMG poor Lili. She's just a girl and the worst things imaginable are happening to her. 😣
CHP 33
Hold up! Kate and Pagan are talking about children, and there's a little something here about "once in Switzerland was enough to produce that darling little thing". Are they talking about Lili? Is one of them her mother? 🤔 I ruled out Pagan, so maybe it's Kate?
CHP 35
Now that the women are intentionally becoming mothers, they're talking about the pains of labor, and of course we can count on Maxine to deliver a description that is both elegant and crass:
^ What is Conran on about with "unusual"? That's classic Maxine.
Poor Kate is trying and failing to have a baby. Could she have given up the only child she successfully had?
CHP 36
📣 TITLE SPOTTED! Judy expands her office into a coast-to-coast public relations business and decides to call it Local American Creative Enterprise, or LACE for short. TBH, I thought the title would have a more scintillating meaning.
CHP 37
Oh dear, Kate's husband is into... , but she's really not into it. Why does everything always go wrong for Kate? 😭
DID I SPEAK TOO SOON ABOUT THE MEANING OF LACE BECAUSE THIS IS TOO GOOD:
CHP 39
So there's Kate, working as a newspaper correspondent. She gets sent to Sydon during a war and just FATALLY SHOOTS A SAUDI SOLDIER?! ⁉️ Last time I checked, that's not something newspaper correspondents do... 😶
👉 Let's do a 500 page check-in: TBH, it kinda feels like things have gone off the rails, yet I'm still keen to learn which of the four women is Lili's mother, so... ONWARD!
CHP 40
Kate is interviewing Lili, who's now a famous actress, and I can't help but wonder if Kate is unwittingly interviewing the daughter she gave up...
CHP 42
Good heavens! Judy is having a power play with a man named Griffin, and she's resorting to some very... *ahem* interesting... *cough* methods to show him she's in control. 🫣 Let's just say there was whiskey involved, and olive oil, and a pie too.🥧
CHP 48
OMG so much bad stuff has happened to Lili...
👉 Let's do a 600 page check-in: WHO IS LILI'S MOTHER? JUST TELL ME ALREADY!‼️
CHP 51
I'm sorry, but what? His EROTIC WHAT?!👇
CHP 53
I can't even take this chapter seriously. 🤦♀️ King Abdullah gets in a helicopter with his wife and son, and...
CHP 54
Lili's hooking up with some guy and we're told she's drawn to the musky, erotic smell of sweat on his young body. 🤢 Stop trying to make the smell of sweat sexy. It's not going to happen.
🚨OH, HOLY SMOKES! Lili just slept with Alexandre who's ONLY FIFTEEN AND IS KATE'S SON?! What if Kate is Lili's mother? Did Lili just unwittingly sleep with her brother? 🫢
CHP 56
Lili and King Abdullah are having a moment, feeling drawn to each other romantically, and they both say they feel like they've always known each other. So now I'm wondering if he's her dad. Like, WHAT IF LILI IS FEELING ROMANTICALLY DRAWN TO HER FATHER? 🫣
CHP 57
Welp, Lili's been in a relationship with Abdullah for a year now, so I really hope he's not her dad. 😅
👉 Let's do a 700 page check-in: I NEED to know if Lili slept with her brother or her dad, so I'll be sprinting to the reveal. 🏃♀️💨
CHP 60
🥁 DRUM ROLL PLEASE, because WE HAVE OUR ANSWER! Lili's mother is...
CHP 61
Oh... oh no. OH NO! Lili's father is...
CHP 63
That ending tho! 🫢
Turns out...
Not gonna lie, I was thoroughly entertained by this wild romp through a seventies soap opera.
SOME FUN FACTS FROM THE AFTERWORD
- Lace is based on the author's own life.
- Lili is modeled after a real Hungarian refugee.
- None of the sexual encounters in Lace happened to the author's friends.
- Conran's ex husband worried that since the book was based on real people, some private details about him had been woven into the book, so he paid his lawyer to read Lace.
- Conran compares Kate's feelings about shooting a soldier to the way she felt when she was in Australia and shot a man-sized kangaroo. (You can't make this stuff up.)
I heard about this book in Blurb Your Enthusiasm, where author Louise Willder describes Lace as having one of the greatest lines in the history of the written word: Which one of you bitches is my mother?
Willder also says it represents the zenith of the "bonkbuster" genre (which I've never heard of).
bonkbuster: A term coined in the 1980s to describe a novel with explicit content, turbulent drama, and high-stakes content. The word blends "blockbuster" and "bonk" (slang for having sex). FUN!
Curiosity got the better of me, so I'm giving this one a read. It's a whopping 742 pages, so I'm counting it toward PROJECT TOME (in which I strive to read the behemoths in my collection).
PROLOGUE
Nothing says controversial like kicking things off with a 13-year-old girl getting an illegal abortion. 🫣
CHP 01
Maxine (age 47) travels with douches and suppositories. Clearly she likes order more than comfort. 😅
Judy (age 45) succeeded in life quickly against the odds. She leads a glamorous life yet likes to be thought of as warm-hearted and hard working. 💼
Pampered Pagan (age 46) never so much as takes sleeping pills or other medicine, not even aspirin. She's terrified of getting hooked again. 💊
Kate (age 46) is a successful magazine editor and but still must live up to her father's expectation that she be on at the top of the pile. 📖
All four women have been invited by superstar Lili to a secret meeting, for what reason, they have no idea.
💥AND THERE'S THE ICONIC LINE: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" 💥
Something tells me this is gonna be good. 🍿
CHP 02
Wait, WHAT?! ⁉️ Is this seriously happening? 🫣 Did Pagan's mom just... ? To KATE? 🫢 OMG.
CHP 04
Why does everything bad happen to Kate? 😭
He didn't seem to realize his thing was showing. The lavender-pink penis reared up from its nest of black hair, balls wobbling beneath it.
How ugly it was, Kate thought.
Maxine is getting some action, but WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE COULD "SMELL HIS DESIRE"? 👃
Now she could feel his muscular nakedness and smell his desire.
OMG... 🫢 What happens to Pagan is horrific.
👉 Let's do a 100 page check-in: I feel like I'm reading a Danielle Steele novel written for a YA audience (in a good way).
CHP 05
Kind of loving how (French) Maxine's cursing is written:
"Ow, merde, sheet, ferk, dammit, bloody beech."
👉 Let's do a 200 page check-in: Admittedly, the last few chapters centered on Judy's burgeoning career in fashion were a little slow. I'd like less clothes and more scandal, please and thank you.
CHP 15
So there I was, thinking I was reading a lovely story of young Lili growing up in the Hungarian countryside, but NO. Suddenly it's all Russian invasion and running for their lives and the most horrific conclusion to the chapter, which sees.... . 🫢😭
CHP 17
Maxine getting kinky, IN PUBLIC! Reaching an explosive climax like "a cork bursting from a bottle of champagne." Go, girl! 🍾💥
CHP 19
Maxine's living the good life remodeling a French château to transform it into a lucrative hotel, but her husband is kind of a freak? He demands that she not wear underwear so he can get at her goods whenever he wants (hence, she's always doing it in public).
🌶️ HOT OR NOT? 🚫 - Maxine defies her husband's demand that she not wear underwear, and when he finds out, this happens:
...he had stopped the car and roughly told Maxine to get out. There on the grass verge of the country road he made her wriggle out of her panties, then he threw the flimsy scrap of peach chiffon over the hedge, pulled Maxine into the backseat, put her over his knee and spanked her.
Apparently Maxine likes it, so... 🤷♀️
CHP 23
HOLY SMOKES! Some serious drama playing out between Kate, her fiancé Robert, and Pagan...
CHP 25
Oh... OH MY GOSH. I have arrived at the infamous goldfish scene. 😵💫 I can't even with this...
With silken cords he would bind the wrists of the more adventurous ones to the bedhead and then he would dip one golden hand—his skin wasn't very dark, just a permanent sun-bronzed tone—into the bowl of golden fish that always seemed to be at his bedside. Abdullah would quickly scoop out one little fish and swiftly push the wriggling creature into the girl. At this point, she generally stiffened and shrieked with surprise, but Abdullah threw his body on top of hers and held her hard against the mattress until she relaxed and was able to enjoy the strange erotic sensations as she felt the little fish move inside her warm body. As soon as the girl started to groan with pleasure, Abdullah would slide down her body and—with great dexterity—he would languorously suck out the goldfish.
Like, WHAT?⁉️
I'M TRAUMATIZED 😭😭😭
CHP 26
Poor Pagan. 🍇😢
CHP 28
Happy to report that Pagan & Kate...
I've just realized that I probably should have been trying to figure out which woman is Lili's biological mother. 😶 I'm ruling out Pagan because her husband accused her of being unable to have children, and I think a post-pregnancy belly would have given away that she'd had a child before. 🤔
CHP 29
OMG, Pagan's new guy is MAKING LOVE TO HER ARMPIT?!?! ⁉️ Making love, as in, paying arduous attention to it with his tongue, but still... 👅🤢
His thrusts were slow and insistent until the moment when she gave the wild shriek of a gull as it soars to heaven...
LIKE A SEAGULL. 🤣
CHP 30
Oh man... Pagan's guy had a massive heart attack, and now he can't have sex anymore. EVER. Pretty sure that's not a thing. 🤔 Maybe he's just tired of licking her armpit? 🤷♀️
👉 Let's do a 400 page check-in: SO MUCH DRAMA! LOVING IT! 🙌
CHP 32
OMG poor Lili. She's just a girl and the worst things imaginable are happening to her. 😣
CHP 33
Hold up! Kate and Pagan are talking about children, and there's a little something here about "once in Switzerland was enough to produce that darling little thing". Are they talking about Lili? Is one of them her mother? 🤔 I ruled out Pagan, so maybe it's Kate?
CHP 35
Now that the women are intentionally becoming mothers, they're talking about the pains of labor, and of course we can count on Maxine to deliver a description that is both elegant and crass:
They endlessly discussed how much it hurt, whether you called them pains or contractions, and what it really felt like. "Shitting a football," said Maxine in French with unusual vulgarity but much feeling.
^ What is Conran on about with "unusual"? That's classic Maxine.
Poor Kate is trying and failing to have a baby. Could she have given up the only child she successfully had?
CHP 36
📣 TITLE SPOTTED! Judy expands her office into a coast-to-coast public relations business and decides to call it Local American Creative Enterprise, or LACE for short. TBH, I thought the title would have a more scintillating meaning.
CHP 37
Oh dear, Kate's husband is into... , but she's really not into it. Why does everything always go wrong for Kate? 😭
DID I SPEAK TOO SOON ABOUT THE MEANING OF LACE BECAUSE THIS IS TOO GOOD:
He had never so much as worn a frilled shirt to a party, never indicated in any way that he preferred his balls veiled by lace...
CHP 39
So there's Kate, working as a newspaper correspondent. She gets sent to Sydon during a war and just FATALLY SHOOTS A SAUDI SOLDIER?! ⁉️ Last time I checked, that's not something newspaper correspondents do... 😶
👉 Let's do a 500 page check-in: TBH, it kinda feels like things have gone off the rails, yet I'm still keen to learn which of the four women is Lili's mother, so... ONWARD!
CHP 40
Kate is interviewing Lili, who's now a famous actress, and I can't help but wonder if Kate is unwittingly interviewing the daughter she gave up...
CHP 42
Good heavens! Judy is having a power play with a man named Griffin, and she's resorting to some very... *ahem* interesting... *cough* methods to show him she's in control. 🫣 Let's just say there was whiskey involved, and olive oil, and a pie too.🥧
CHP 48
OMG so much bad stuff has happened to Lili...
👉 Let's do a 600 page check-in: WHO IS LILI'S MOTHER? JUST TELL ME ALREADY!‼️
CHP 51
I'm sorry, but what? His EROTIC WHAT?!👇
...and then she felt his hard chest against her soft breast and smelled the erotic, fresh-straw-smelling sweat of his armpits. She bent her head and nuzzled there, inhaling the soft down in the pit of his arm, the only hair on his body.
CHP 53
I can't even take this chapter seriously. 🤦♀️ King Abdullah gets in a helicopter with his wife and son, and...
CHP 54
Lili's hooking up with some guy and we're told she's drawn to the musky, erotic smell of sweat on his young body. 🤢 Stop trying to make the smell of sweat sexy. It's not going to happen.
🚨OH, HOLY SMOKES! Lili just slept with Alexandre who's ONLY FIFTEEN AND IS KATE'S SON?! What if Kate is Lili's mother? Did Lili just unwittingly sleep with her brother? 🫢
CHP 56
Lili and King Abdullah are having a moment, feeling drawn to each other romantically, and they both say they feel like they've always known each other. So now I'm wondering if he's her dad. Like, WHAT IF LILI IS FEELING ROMANTICALLY DRAWN TO HER FATHER? 🫣
CHP 57
Welp, Lili's been in a relationship with Abdullah for a year now, so I really hope he's not her dad. 😅
👉 Let's do a 700 page check-in: I NEED to know if Lili slept with her brother or her dad, so I'll be sprinting to the reveal. 🏃♀️💨
CHP 60
🥁 DRUM ROLL PLEASE, because WE HAVE OUR ANSWER! Lili's mother is...
CHP 61
Oh... oh no. OH NO! Lili's father is...
CHP 63
That ending tho! 🫢
Turns out...
Not gonna lie, I was thoroughly entertained by this wild romp through a seventies soap opera.
SOME FUN FACTS FROM THE AFTERWORD
- Lace is based on the author's own life.
- Lili is modeled after a real Hungarian refugee.
- None of the sexual encounters in Lace happened to the author's friends.
- Conran's ex husband worried that since the book was based on real people, some private details about him had been woven into the book, so he paid his lawyer to read Lace.
- Conran compares Kate's feelings about shooting a soldier to the way she felt when she was in Australia and shot a man-sized kangaroo. (You can't make this stuff up.)
August 30, 2011
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
Simple literary genius! We've all heard lines in movies that have stuck with us forever, but this was the first time I'd read a book and had that happen to me!
My love of literature began early in my life, but Shirley Conrans' Lace was one of the first novels that got me excited and hence I remember it vividly (although I re-read it recently, just to be sure you see).
But as an enthusiastic teen I read the book and then I awaited the mini-series of the same name with baited breath. Because if they didn't use that line... well they just HAD to! I was not disappointed. (I maintain firmly that one should always read the book BEFORE one watches any re-enactment of it! NO EXCEPTIONS! And this is not the last time you will hear me say this!)
But back to Lace...
As a teenager I loved Lily! I wanted to BE Lily! She had been hard done by, she had a terrible upbringing, but she was not going to let that stop her being who she wanted to be and by God, she would make those accountable for her misfortunes pay!
And she always got what she wanted.
Lace is a great story, about women, our fierce love and protective instincts for our children, our lovers, and our girlfriends as well as our abilities, our talents and our passions.
Of the four possible mothers of Lily my bet was with Pagan. I identified with Pagan, like me, she was rebellious, questioning of the rules (just because it's always been that way, doesn't mean it always should be) and sometimes she got things terribly wrong.
The characters in Lace are all like this, they have very realistic and human qualities, imperfections that endear them to us as we can see ourselves in there somewhere.
But there was just a 25% chance of my being right about Pagan, after all there was Judy, the poor American girl, Maxine, the wealthy French girl and Kate, the English girl (like Pagan) to consider. The four friends had made a pact many years ago to never reveal which one of them was actually pregnant.
But Lily wanted to know, and she would stop at nothing to find out.
So, was I right about Pagan? And did Lily find out who her mother was?
Well, that would be telling.
You'll have to read it to find out. And when you do... OMG... look out for the bit with the goldfish!
Simple literary genius! We've all heard lines in movies that have stuck with us forever, but this was the first time I'd read a book and had that happen to me!
My love of literature began early in my life, but Shirley Conrans' Lace was one of the first novels that got me excited and hence I remember it vividly (although I re-read it recently, just to be sure you see).
But as an enthusiastic teen I read the book and then I awaited the mini-series of the same name with baited breath. Because if they didn't use that line... well they just HAD to! I was not disappointed. (I maintain firmly that one should always read the book BEFORE one watches any re-enactment of it! NO EXCEPTIONS! And this is not the last time you will hear me say this!)
But back to Lace...
As a teenager I loved Lily! I wanted to BE Lily! She had been hard done by, she had a terrible upbringing, but she was not going to let that stop her being who she wanted to be and by God, she would make those accountable for her misfortunes pay!
And she always got what she wanted.
Lace is a great story, about women, our fierce love and protective instincts for our children, our lovers, and our girlfriends as well as our abilities, our talents and our passions.
Of the four possible mothers of Lily my bet was with Pagan. I identified with Pagan, like me, she was rebellious, questioning of the rules (just because it's always been that way, doesn't mean it always should be) and sometimes she got things terribly wrong.
The characters in Lace are all like this, they have very realistic and human qualities, imperfections that endear them to us as we can see ourselves in there somewhere.
But there was just a 25% chance of my being right about Pagan, after all there was Judy, the poor American girl, Maxine, the wealthy French girl and Kate, the English girl (like Pagan) to consider. The four friends had made a pact many years ago to never reveal which one of them was actually pregnant.
But Lily wanted to know, and she would stop at nothing to find out.
So, was I right about Pagan? And did Lily find out who her mother was?
Well, that would be telling.
You'll have to read it to find out. And when you do... OMG... look out for the bit with the goldfish!
October 27, 2012
Well, colour me surprised, but I loved this.
I was told it was trash. I went into it expecting to be mildly entertained. True, there is a very definite target audience and as a general rule it has a vagina, but I had so much fun with this book.
Which one of you bitches is my mother?
Thus does Lili, famous gorgeous actress, attempt to find out from four women which of them is her birth mother. The women, Maxine, Judy, Kate and Pagan, went to finishing school in Switzerland in the late 40s. One of them got pregnant and had a baby, which got put up for fostering. Lace follows the four potential mothers, and the daughter, as they grow up. They all do exciting things, and difficult things, and spend a lot of time hopping to and fro across the Atlantic, and all but one of them gets married at least once. There are a miscellany of men, who are pretty much all secondary characters, and some of them are awful and some of them are lovely. By the time it got to the end, I had narrowed down the potential mother to one of two, and of those two it was not the one I had expected.
I don't really read books for sex (I swear! shut up), so I was far more interested in the gooey relationship and Career!Woman stuff than anything else. I have three observations to make on that front: 1) there wasn't as much sex as I had been led to believe, 2) apparently it is quite easy to overuse the word 'erotic' as a descriptor, and 3) the goldfish scene is indelibly burnt into my memory and that is NOT HOT, GUYS. NOT HOT AT ALL. YKINMK, apparently, but I stand by the fact that GOLDFISH ARE NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME. Good grief.
That aside, Lace is very much a product of its time, in terms of content as much as in terms of style. There's a very good article in the Guardian about how it's actually quite feminist, which basically sums up a lot of the reasons I enjoyed it. I really recommend the article, if you have ten minutes.
I think I also enjoyed this book because I came to it at the right moment - right now, I've just finished my degree(s), and I'm trying to work out what to do with my life. I identify a lot with some aspects of all the characters, in terms of how they react to where they are in life, and what they want to do with it. I'm glad I read this now, because it was remarkably reassuring. I wonder, if I come back to it in a decade's time, whether I will think the same thing. (It is, after all, quite a sheltered novel about very sheltered and privileged people - on which more in a second.) I also wonder how much more it will have dated in another decade, because it really has dated in the last 30 years. That didn't at all detract from how much I loved it, though - in fact, I think that escapism of being set in a different world to the world of 2012 made the bits I did identify with resonate more.
Let's talk briefly about how sheltered and privileged the characters in this book - and the book itself - are. And that is, very. They do well, when they want for money it is not on a desperate level, and they make up for it with luck, and influence. I don't even care how privileged it is, it's escapism. The world that Conran writes is clearly one she has grown up in. She's been to a Swiss finishing school. She can spot vulgarity at sixty paces. She describes the outfits of every character with a relish unparalleled in the sex scenes, and it's marvellous. Surprisingly, that doesn't grate with me at all - there's some quality to the book that just feels really observed. I am a bit of a snob about my describers of old money - it's very difficult to pretend, and Conran's rich set sounds right, in some indefinable way. I liked it.
When I picked up Lace, I expected it to be the sort of thing I'd file under 'guilty pleasure,' or 'books I like but would never be seen reading.' I know a lot of people, after all, who would roll their eyes at how much I enjoyed it. But I did enjoy it, very much indeed, and I can think of several friends to whom I will almost certainly be recommending it. Interestingly, at least two of those are people I met as a teenager at school. Four stars.
I was told it was trash. I went into it expecting to be mildly entertained. True, there is a very definite target audience and as a general rule it has a vagina, but I had so much fun with this book.
Which one of you bitches is my mother?
Thus does Lili, famous gorgeous actress, attempt to find out from four women which of them is her birth mother. The women, Maxine, Judy, Kate and Pagan, went to finishing school in Switzerland in the late 40s. One of them got pregnant and had a baby, which got put up for fostering. Lace follows the four potential mothers, and the daughter, as they grow up. They all do exciting things, and difficult things, and spend a lot of time hopping to and fro across the Atlantic, and all but one of them gets married at least once. There are a miscellany of men, who are pretty much all secondary characters, and some of them are awful and some of them are lovely. By the time it got to the end, I had narrowed down the potential mother to one of two, and of those two it was not the one I had expected.
I don't really read books for sex (I swear! shut up), so I was far more interested in the gooey relationship and Career!Woman stuff than anything else. I have three observations to make on that front: 1) there wasn't as much sex as I had been led to believe, 2) apparently it is quite easy to overuse the word 'erotic' as a descriptor, and 3) the goldfish scene is indelibly burnt into my memory and that is NOT HOT, GUYS. NOT HOT AT ALL. YKINMK, apparently, but I stand by the fact that GOLDFISH ARE NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME. Good grief.
That aside, Lace is very much a product of its time, in terms of content as much as in terms of style. There's a very good article in the Guardian about how it's actually quite feminist, which basically sums up a lot of the reasons I enjoyed it. I really recommend the article, if you have ten minutes.
I think I also enjoyed this book because I came to it at the right moment - right now, I've just finished my degree(s), and I'm trying to work out what to do with my life. I identify a lot with some aspects of all the characters, in terms of how they react to where they are in life, and what they want to do with it. I'm glad I read this now, because it was remarkably reassuring. I wonder, if I come back to it in a decade's time, whether I will think the same thing. (It is, after all, quite a sheltered novel about very sheltered and privileged people - on which more in a second.) I also wonder how much more it will have dated in another decade, because it really has dated in the last 30 years. That didn't at all detract from how much I loved it, though - in fact, I think that escapism of being set in a different world to the world of 2012 made the bits I did identify with resonate more.
Let's talk briefly about how sheltered and privileged the characters in this book - and the book itself - are. And that is, very. They do well, when they want for money it is not on a desperate level, and they make up for it with luck, and influence. I don't even care how privileged it is, it's escapism. The world that Conran writes is clearly one she has grown up in. She's been to a Swiss finishing school. She can spot vulgarity at sixty paces. She describes the outfits of every character with a relish unparalleled in the sex scenes, and it's marvellous. Surprisingly, that doesn't grate with me at all - there's some quality to the book that just feels really observed. I am a bit of a snob about my describers of old money - it's very difficult to pretend, and Conran's rich set sounds right, in some indefinable way. I liked it.
When I picked up Lace, I expected it to be the sort of thing I'd file under 'guilty pleasure,' or 'books I like but would never be seen reading.' I know a lot of people, after all, who would roll their eyes at how much I enjoyed it. But I did enjoy it, very much indeed, and I can think of several friends to whom I will almost certainly be recommending it. Interestingly, at least two of those are people I met as a teenager at school. Four stars.
October 8, 2017
Before you read my review, siddle up to your mother and ask her about the goldfish scene in Lace (1982). Watch her blush. I doubt there is a woman alive who lived through the 1980s without reading or watching Lace. The novel opens with one of its most famous scenes, the young actress, Lili, has gathered four women to a hotel room in New York. The four women were childhood friends and have all made waves in their respective careers. Lili stands above them and delivers her killer line, ‘Which one of you bitches is my mother!?’. A classic is born.
I went into Lace well-aware of its infamy. The numerous sex scenes present in this novel gave way to a new genre, the bonkbuster. However, Lace is far more than just 750-pages of erotica. I would genuinely call it a feminist classic. After the Lili’s confrontation in the first chapter the novel jumps back to our four ‘mothers’, Maxine, Kate, Judy, and Pagan, in their teens in a boarding school in Switzerland. We then follow their lives as they all become highly successful and influential women. This is where the underlying feminism becomes present. This is a novel about women owning their own lives. There is literally one prominent male character and he is an actual barbarian. Lace is The Women’s Room meets Deep Throat.
I think it is obvious that I adored this novel. It has sold three million copies for a reason. However it is quite of its time. I doubt we’ll never have another Lace. New editions of Shirley Conran’s bibliography were re-published after the phenomenon of 50 Shades in order to show the world exactly how erotic bestsellers are done. Conran was ordained ‘queen of the bonkbuster‘ a few years back and I can definitely vouch for that title.
I went into Lace well-aware of its infamy. The numerous sex scenes present in this novel gave way to a new genre, the bonkbuster. However, Lace is far more than just 750-pages of erotica. I would genuinely call it a feminist classic. After the Lili’s confrontation in the first chapter the novel jumps back to our four ‘mothers’, Maxine, Kate, Judy, and Pagan, in their teens in a boarding school in Switzerland. We then follow their lives as they all become highly successful and influential women. This is where the underlying feminism becomes present. This is a novel about women owning their own lives. There is literally one prominent male character and he is an actual barbarian. Lace is The Women’s Room meets Deep Throat.
I think it is obvious that I adored this novel. It has sold three million copies for a reason. However it is quite of its time. I doubt we’ll never have another Lace. New editions of Shirley Conran’s bibliography were re-published after the phenomenon of 50 Shades in order to show the world exactly how erotic bestsellers are done. Conran was ordained ‘queen of the bonkbuster‘ a few years back and I can definitely vouch for that title.
February 4, 2025
Delightful.
A book I have had for five years, and I wish I had read it then because it was more to my taste than it is now. It is an excellent read and although it is 734 pages it wasn't padded at all. It's a story of four sex-crazed girls at finishing school in Switzerland and their lives afterwards. It's an amusing and very enjoyable story.
A book I have had for five years, and I wish I had read it then because it was more to my taste than it is now. It is an excellent read and although it is 734 pages it wasn't padded at all. It's a story of four sex-crazed girls at finishing school in Switzerland and their lives afterwards. It's an amusing and very enjoyable story.
August 29, 2024
It really does all revolve around that classic line: “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” but Shirley Conran nevertheless manages to spin it out over 750 very readable pages.
It’s full of sex (at times weird/horrible sex) and glamour and sisterhood and it’s compulsively enjoyable stuff. Not hard to see why it’s still in print after 40 years.
It’s full of sex (at times weird/horrible sex) and glamour and sisterhood and it’s compulsively enjoyable stuff. Not hard to see why it’s still in print after 40 years.
August 11, 2014
I'd never read this or seen the mini-series when it first came out (sorry, but I have to admit to being old enough for that); then everyone started doing Grey comparisons and I saw, somewhere, that this was the "Original BONKBUSTER", so I had to read it.
I liked the characters, I liked the plot; the storyline drew me in, and some of the set-piece situations are nothing short of brilliant. Weaving 5 strands of a story over a 20+ year timeframe was very skilful, and the various red-herrings kept the suspense going right up to the end.
Now I need to read Lace 2.
I liked the characters, I liked the plot; the storyline drew me in, and some of the set-piece situations are nothing short of brilliant. Weaving 5 strands of a story over a 20+ year timeframe was very skilful, and the various red-herrings kept the suspense going right up to the end.
Now I need to read Lace 2.
December 24, 2015
I thought I posted a review on this years ago. Obviously I did not. Which is where because I remember this book aver 27 years. I was but a wee child of 12 when I read this book. One of the girls I knew, her older sister was reading it one day at a picnic. So I read a few pages and was like, huh. Then she gave me a few looks into where Lily is with the Arabic man and being sexually used. There were several erotic scenes in here that as a 12 year old really intrigued me due to my predisposition towards kinky sex. Some may say that this is inappropriate, it may have been. But I read it and enjoyed it anyway.
What I remember most is the submission in this story. Forget that is is Lily demanding to know which of the 4 women is her mother... "Are you my mother?" Instead, there is the slight incestuous taboo with possibly having sex with your father which was guiltily arousing. Not that I would ever want to have sex with my dad. But to have relations with a male who had sex with your mother is wrong yet exciting.
I also remember some of the kinky scenes in here back when this was very rarely written. I read parts over and over again. For me, this is a pivotal book in my youth which gave me an idea that I was a bit different than others when it came to physical interaction. There are three other books which had similar impacts. It, Flowers in the Attic and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. I read these at age 11, 13 and 14 respectively. For those who have similar kinky desires, you will know exactly which parts that attracted me.
I remember when I read this book if I was sick or something was wrong with me. I wish I had someone to talk to who could have explained it to me. I wish the internet was around so I could look up information. As it was, I fumbled around as a child. Still, I survived. This book holds a special place in my mind because of its influence. If I went back to read it now, I probably wouldn't think much of it.
What I remember most is the submission in this story. Forget that is is Lily demanding to know which of the 4 women is her mother... "Are you my mother?" Instead, there is the slight incestuous taboo with possibly having sex with your father which was guiltily arousing. Not that I would ever want to have sex with my dad. But to have relations with a male who had sex with your mother is wrong yet exciting.
I also remember some of the kinky scenes in here back when this was very rarely written. I read parts over and over again. For me, this is a pivotal book in my youth which gave me an idea that I was a bit different than others when it came to physical interaction. There are three other books which had similar impacts. It, Flowers in the Attic and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. I read these at age 11, 13 and 14 respectively. For those who have similar kinky desires, you will know exactly which parts that attracted me.
I remember when I read this book if I was sick or something was wrong with me. I wish I had someone to talk to who could have explained it to me. I wish the internet was around so I could look up information. As it was, I fumbled around as a child. Still, I survived. This book holds a special place in my mind because of its influence. If I went back to read it now, I probably wouldn't think much of it.
August 17, 2012
Awesome novel! Very well written and kept me surprised and very interested. I would recommend it to anyone. Warning... There is a second novel called Lace 2 (how original, right?) I'm telling you, do not google it and ruin the plot event for yourself. Turns out it was a television series back in the day. Naturally my curiosity got the best of me as I was trying to figure out what the second book was called and came across BIG AND BOLD the whole premise the story is based on. I was only half way through the book and my world shattered! Do me a favor, don't ruin it for yourself!
July 17, 2014
This book was full of every cliche possible, it had no overarching story seeming rather to be a collection of as many sexual situations the author could think of, and these were not well written. Having finished the book it seemed to me that the first and final parts were connected but that almost the entirety of the rest of the book could easily have been skipped without detracting from the reveal at the end. This book is very long and not worth the investment it demands.
May 5, 2014
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?" I instantly knew I was hooked after reading this line.
Lace centres around the lives of four best friends depicting their lives from the forties to the late seventies. One of the close group has a teenage pregnancy and this mystery of who the father is lies at the heart of the story. The book is epic in scope taking us on a sweeping journey through Gstaad to Paris to Hungary to Cairo to the Middle East to London and New York. I also liked that Conran based the characters' lives and experiences on aspects of her own life. Lace is not as trashy as most people believe. There are, in fact, feminist overtones to it with strong female characters who are all successful career women. Plus, the miscellany of men involved are secondary characters and serve mostly as lovers ranging from a king to a transvestite husband. There is far less sex than I was led to believe too. I also liked the detailed descriptions of the glamorous clothes through the eras.
I thoroughly enjoyed the glittering, melodramatic and fun ride that Shirley Conran took me on. Looking forward to watching the Lace mini-series and also continuing the characters lives in Lace 2. Just one more thing... I will never look at a goldfish in the same way again!
Lace centres around the lives of four best friends depicting their lives from the forties to the late seventies. One of the close group has a teenage pregnancy and this mystery of who the father is lies at the heart of the story. The book is epic in scope taking us on a sweeping journey through Gstaad to Paris to Hungary to Cairo to the Middle East to London and New York. I also liked that Conran based the characters' lives and experiences on aspects of her own life. Lace is not as trashy as most people believe. There are, in fact, feminist overtones to it with strong female characters who are all successful career women. Plus, the miscellany of men involved are secondary characters and serve mostly as lovers ranging from a king to a transvestite husband. There is far less sex than I was led to believe too. I also liked the detailed descriptions of the glamorous clothes through the eras.
I thoroughly enjoyed the glittering, melodramatic and fun ride that Shirley Conran took me on. Looking forward to watching the Lace mini-series and also continuing the characters lives in Lace 2. Just one more thing... I will never look at a goldfish in the same way again!
January 2, 2016
Quivering....
All the women in this book have experiences which involve quivering: whether he quivers, she quivers or they both quiver at the same time, after a while I shook my head every time the word was mentioned. It must appear every two to three pages.
For a book supposedly about strong, intelligent women they sure go from one man to the next, their whole lives seem dominated by relationships.
It has such an unbelievable ending, I thought I was reading a spoof parody. The book seemed to go on and on and I ended up scanning it rushing to the end. Thankfully I only paid 99p for it.
If this book was the book that defined a generation, according to the cover, thank goodness I wasn't born during it and influenced by it!
All the women in this book have experiences which involve quivering: whether he quivers, she quivers or they both quiver at the same time, after a while I shook my head every time the word was mentioned. It must appear every two to three pages.
For a book supposedly about strong, intelligent women they sure go from one man to the next, their whole lives seem dominated by relationships.
It has such an unbelievable ending, I thought I was reading a spoof parody. The book seemed to go on and on and I ended up scanning it rushing to the end. Thankfully I only paid 99p for it.
If this book was the book that defined a generation, according to the cover, thank goodness I wasn't born during it and influenced by it!
March 11, 2016
Ok, so I watched the movie many years ago and decided to read the book. I'm glad I watched the movie first. Once in a while I'm into the chic lit drama that seems to attack my inner child and give in to the juicy, bad mouthed, mystery of 4 women whom one had birthed a child in secret. The book was written very well and held my attention as flashes of the movie came into play. It was long until the pages were becoming a blur as I was able to follow each scene, saying to myself "Oh, yes. I remember that part". However, I think I outgrew the chic lit drama scene in my 30's so it wasn't as enjoyable the new phase of crime mysteries I read. Still a good book. Had I read this in my 20's I'd have rated it higher, I'm sure.
September 18, 2013
Read this book at least 3 time or so and this was a 5 star book for me back in the days.
Still have the Dutch hardback and my daughter wanted something to read. Gave her Lace and she loved it. Wanted to read the sequel as well.
Great book if you want to read something light.
Still have the Dutch hardback and my daughter wanted something to read. Gave her Lace and she loved it. Wanted to read the sequel as well.
Great book if you want to read something light.
August 18, 2014
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Priceless. That line took the story.
February 16, 2014
I read this first when I was a teenager in the 80s and all I really remembered about it was that there was a lot of sex. However, when I read Samantha Ellis' spin on it as a career woman's manifesto in How to be a Heroine, my curiosity was piqued and I decided to read it again.
It is certainly a page-turner and i ploughed through it pretty fast. The writing is a bit clunky and old-fashioned, some of the characters are flimsy, and the plot is a bit unbelievable. But, I read it as a story that is really about female friendship and how important that is in the lives of the four central characters. I applaud Shirley Conran for that, as I'm not sure there are that many books which at their heart are about friendship, and for me, that is such an important part of life that I forgive Lace for all it's other failings and don't regret re-reading it.
It is certainly a page-turner and i ploughed through it pretty fast. The writing is a bit clunky and old-fashioned, some of the characters are flimsy, and the plot is a bit unbelievable. But, I read it as a story that is really about female friendship and how important that is in the lives of the four central characters. I applaud Shirley Conran for that, as I'm not sure there are that many books which at their heart are about friendship, and for me, that is such an important part of life that I forgive Lace for all it's other failings and don't regret re-reading it.
October 12, 2025
“Which one of you bitches is my mother?”
― Shirley Conran, Lace
Proud reader of "Lace". Not so proud reader of the sequel.
Lush, opulent, glittery, ostentatious, glitzy, and oodles of fun.
― Shirley Conran, Lace
Proud reader of "Lace". Not so proud reader of the sequel.
Lush, opulent, glittery, ostentatious, glitzy, and oodles of fun.
August 31, 2023
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
An engrossing read, though overly long.
An engrossing read, though overly long.
July 7, 2021
Lace was the Tsundoku Squad Book Group read for May. It’s a biggie at 750 pages, so we split this one into 5 parts seeing as there was an extra saturday in May. We had some great conversations during the month and it brought about a lot of topics we weren’t expecting.
For starters we thought there would be a lot of sex, one or 2 of the group were a bit dubious going into it, and although there are a few graphic scenes, it wasn’t as much as we thought. The Goldfish was a very unwelcome surprise, and the cellar scene was a bit much.
The book is very outdated in certain ways, but it was advanced for its time in others. We were expecting an old book but it wasn’t what we got. The outdated parts were definitely not something that would be written today, being told to ignore your husband cheating was a big one, waking up to someone erm doing things to you and saying what a lovely way to wake up, I think you’ll find that’s assault. There were a lot of controversial topics in the book, and the opening chapter was a rough one. There was a big part in the middle involving Lily which was hard to read too and I think a lot of the group may have skimmed through that bit. Most of the men in the story are awful, but the book throws quite a surprise at you towards the end.
But there were good themes too, of strong women, beautiful friendships, and a lot of love. We all loved the friendship between the girls, they were always there for each other, fling across countries to help each other. It’s the kind of friendship you want in your life, maybe you haven’t seen each other in while, but you know if something is wrong, you will be there for each other.
There are strong triggers in this book, I won’t go into much detail but if you want to know these they will easily be found. Overall I gave Lace a 3 star, and Tsundoku collective was also a 3.
In the end I wasn’t sure how much I actually enjoyed it, but I did love the fact it brought up great conversation in book group. I’m glad I read it.
For starters we thought there would be a lot of sex, one or 2 of the group were a bit dubious going into it, and although there are a few graphic scenes, it wasn’t as much as we thought. The Goldfish was a very unwelcome surprise, and the cellar scene was a bit much.
The book is very outdated in certain ways, but it was advanced for its time in others. We were expecting an old book but it wasn’t what we got. The outdated parts were definitely not something that would be written today, being told to ignore your husband cheating was a big one, waking up to someone erm doing things to you and saying what a lovely way to wake up, I think you’ll find that’s assault. There were a lot of controversial topics in the book, and the opening chapter was a rough one. There was a big part in the middle involving Lily which was hard to read too and I think a lot of the group may have skimmed through that bit. Most of the men in the story are awful, but the book throws quite a surprise at you towards the end.
But there were good themes too, of strong women, beautiful friendships, and a lot of love. We all loved the friendship between the girls, they were always there for each other, fling across countries to help each other. It’s the kind of friendship you want in your life, maybe you haven’t seen each other in while, but you know if something is wrong, you will be there for each other.
There are strong triggers in this book, I won’t go into much detail but if you want to know these they will easily be found. Overall I gave Lace a 3 star, and Tsundoku collective was also a 3.
In the end I wasn’t sure how much I actually enjoyed it, but I did love the fact it brought up great conversation in book group. I’m glad I read it.
March 22, 2014
I don't know why there are so many saying this is "trashy". I didn't find it to be at all. I though it was a well plotted book, and pretty skilfully done.
It's almost puts you as a reader in the place of a detective, given that you know what's going to happen right at the beginning and then you're sort of connecting up the pieces all the way through.
I did find it to be quite long though (there are 754 pages), which I guess makes sense given the sheer amount of stuff that happens in it. It manages to take you through 5 entire lifetimes, which left me at the end with the uneasy feeling that life really is very short. Also, there was quite a lot of vocabulary relating to fabric and fashion which I didn't know, which a nice opportunity to learn that vocabulary even if it did distract me from the story at times.
In general a pretty good read.
It's almost puts you as a reader in the place of a detective, given that you know what's going to happen right at the beginning and then you're sort of connecting up the pieces all the way through.
I did find it to be quite long though (there are 754 pages), which I guess makes sense given the sheer amount of stuff that happens in it. It manages to take you through 5 entire lifetimes, which left me at the end with the uneasy feeling that life really is very short. Also, there was quite a lot of vocabulary relating to fabric and fashion which I didn't know, which a nice opportunity to learn that vocabulary even if it did distract me from the story at times.
In general a pretty good read.
August 16, 2011
Konusu İsviçre de yatılı okulda okuyan dört kızımızın yıllar sonra bir otel odasında ünlü film yıldızı Lili nin “…taklar hanginiz benim annemsiniz “ sorusuyla başlar.Bu dört kadının yaşamını bir dantel inceliğiyle anlatan kitap içinde her duyguyu barındırıyor .Genç kızlıktan kadınlığa geçiş ilk aşklar ilk deneyimler kendi cinsel kimliklerini bulma çabaları hayal kırıklıkları aldatılmaları ama her şeye rağmen ne olursa olsun dostluklarını yitirmemeleri o kadar güzel anlatılmış o kadar ayrıntılı ki yaşamış gibi tanık oluyorsunuz ayrıca romanda dört kadının yanı sıra ünlü yıldız Lili’nin üzücü yaşam öyküsüne de tanık olacaksınız yer yer çok üzüldüm su an bitirdim ama hala etkisindeyim muhakkak okuyun
August 19, 2023
From the prelude I was hooked. This is by far the chunkiest book I’ve ever read but at no point did I think that I wouldn’t get through it! With the last line of the first chapter ending with “which one of you bitches is my mother?” I needed to know.
A great story about strong females and true friendship.
A great story about strong females and true friendship.
August 29, 2012
A fabulous novel from the 80s republished to show 50 Shades how it's really done. I vaguely remember reading this years and years ago and it's still a fabulous holiday read. Great characters and a silly plot. It's something that never pretends to be something else. Can't wait to read Lace 2.
July 10, 2015
Read repeatedly when I was a teenager!
January 7, 2022
I didn't had a clue how much would possible happen in this book's pages. Wow. This was one chunky book but there was five main characters so there was indeed a lot to tell about them.
This was far way shocking than I thought beforehand and I think it has been even more shocking when it has been freshly published.
I found myself really enjoying this one even though the beginning was a bit slow.
This was far way shocking than I thought beforehand and I think it has been even more shocking when it has been freshly published.
I found myself really enjoying this one even though the beginning was a bit slow.
February 2, 2017
"Oh, God! Does the whole world revolve around sex and money?"
"Yes."
I remember reading this when it came out. I was newly married and in my early twenties. I have to say I probably enjoyed it more then. It's a decent enough read for about 50% of it, but 751 pages was a bit much this time around. If you've reached the 400 page mark and still haven't said what you wanted to say, go back and edit--mercilessly; you've bitten off more than the average reader is prepared to chew. To be brutally honest, I could have done without the entire "Lili" thread and enjoyed the read much more. The first third reads like typical wish-fulfilment chicklit fantasy with its detailed descriptions of luxury cars, clothes, food, interiors. Always le best of le best. You got a problem? Throw money at it. And there will always be money to throw, in Conran's world. Even the poor girls (born so or become so) have a friend with bottomless pockets who doesn't mind writing yet another 4-figure check or burning up her plastic for her pal. This is so symptomatic of the greedy material girls and guys of the eighties, who laid the foundations for the world economic crisis of the 2000s--what I call the "uh-oh" years. If an author has to explain their purpose in a foreword or epilogue, they haven't achieved it. According to the epilogue, Conran fancied LACE a "feminist" novel, given her emphasis on breaking cultural stereotypes and women joining the workforce and making their own way. But did she have to make 98% of the male characters total bastards to achieve that? Each in his own way, all but two of the men in their lives are perverts and/or abusers, from the rich husband who's obsessed with having sex at public venues and forces his wife to go commando (when she doesn't follow orders, he rips her panties off and punishes her by spanking her--and not in a sexy way--on a public road), to the rapists, of which there are more than one. The "nice guys" are either impotent, aged or in very poor health--nicely controllable. I was totally disgusted by Okay, she was unaware, but the author was not, and there was no real need to write that in. It was Conran's choice, and it really stank.
Then there are a couple of huge anachronisms and downright untruths that pulled me up short. In the first place, her nice sweet upperclass girls talk and act like girls of the seventies and eighties, not of the forties and fifties. All that profanity, particularly the F-word, would not be as common when the main characters were in their early teens as it is today (or was in the sixties and seventies.) Conran says that the "stolen clothes" episode actually happened, and she drove the car. That's fine, but she sets the episode in 1950, and yet has someone putting the clothes in garbage bags. Trash bags as we know them today weren't even invented until 1950--in Canada, and didn't become common in France until much later. However, I don't suppose you could stuff haute couture into the zinc pails that were the real standard trash receptacles in Paris of the time. I have Google to check on details that don't ring true; Conran didn't when she wrote, and her readership of the time didn't either.
As for Paris police in 1968 having capes "weighted in the hem with several pounds of lead, judiciously swung such a cape can break every bone in a man's body and yet the agent cannot be said to be carrying a weapon"...well, I'm sorry, I don't know who told Conran that, but it's simply untrue, though she might believe it and trust the person who told her. Some capes have a single "weight" inside the hem at each front corner to make it hang straight, but each one weighs only a few grammes; they're the same weights you can buy in any upholstery shop for curtains. For riots, the Paris police carried teargas, nightsticks and batons--and used them very efficiently.
Conran freely admits that she made up all those steamy sex scenes. Well duh. I found myself skipping them, and skim-reading the last 50 pages of the book just to finish it. Too long, too superficial, and too full of nonsense to rate more than 3 stars.
"Yes."
I remember reading this when it came out. I was newly married and in my early twenties. I have to say I probably enjoyed it more then. It's a decent enough read for about 50% of it, but 751 pages was a bit much this time around. If you've reached the 400 page mark and still haven't said what you wanted to say, go back and edit--mercilessly; you've bitten off more than the average reader is prepared to chew. To be brutally honest, I could have done without the entire "Lili" thread and enjoyed the read much more. The first third reads like typical wish-fulfilment chicklit fantasy with its detailed descriptions of luxury cars, clothes, food, interiors. Always le best of le best. You got a problem? Throw money at it. And there will always be money to throw, in Conran's world. Even the poor girls (born so or become so) have a friend with bottomless pockets who doesn't mind writing yet another 4-figure check or burning up her plastic for her pal. This is so symptomatic of the greedy material girls and guys of the eighties, who laid the foundations for the world economic crisis of the 2000s--what I call the "uh-oh" years. If an author has to explain their purpose in a foreword or epilogue, they haven't achieved it. According to the epilogue, Conran fancied LACE a "feminist" novel, given her emphasis on breaking cultural stereotypes and women joining the workforce and making their own way. But did she have to make 98% of the male characters total bastards to achieve that? Each in his own way, all but two of the men in their lives are perverts and/or abusers, from the rich husband who's obsessed with having sex at public venues and forces his wife to go commando (when she doesn't follow orders, he rips her panties off and punishes her by spanking her--and not in a sexy way--on a public road), to the rapists, of which there are more than one. The "nice guys" are either impotent, aged or in very poor health--nicely controllable. I was totally disgusted by Okay, she was unaware, but the author was not, and there was no real need to write that in. It was Conran's choice, and it really stank.
Then there are a couple of huge anachronisms and downright untruths that pulled me up short. In the first place, her nice sweet upperclass girls talk and act like girls of the seventies and eighties, not of the forties and fifties. All that profanity, particularly the F-word, would not be as common when the main characters were in their early teens as it is today (or was in the sixties and seventies.) Conran says that the "stolen clothes" episode actually happened, and she drove the car. That's fine, but she sets the episode in 1950, and yet has someone putting the clothes in garbage bags. Trash bags as we know them today weren't even invented until 1950--in Canada, and didn't become common in France until much later. However, I don't suppose you could stuff haute couture into the zinc pails that were the real standard trash receptacles in Paris of the time. I have Google to check on details that don't ring true; Conran didn't when she wrote, and her readership of the time didn't either.
As for Paris police in 1968 having capes "weighted in the hem with several pounds of lead, judiciously swung such a cape can break every bone in a man's body and yet the agent cannot be said to be carrying a weapon"...well, I'm sorry, I don't know who told Conran that, but it's simply untrue, though she might believe it and trust the person who told her. Some capes have a single "weight" inside the hem at each front corner to make it hang straight, but each one weighs only a few grammes; they're the same weights you can buy in any upholstery shop for curtains. For riots, the Paris police carried teargas, nightsticks and batons--and used them very efficiently.
Conran freely admits that she made up all those steamy sex scenes. Well duh. I found myself skipping them, and skim-reading the last 50 pages of the book just to finish it. Too long, too superficial, and too full of nonsense to rate more than 3 stars.
December 11, 2009
Four elegant, successful, sophisticated women in their forties have been called to New York to meet Lili, the world-famous movie actress.
Already a legend despite her youth, Lili is beautiful, passionate, notoriously temperamental... Each of the four has a reason to hate Lili. And each of them is astonished to see the others; for they are old friends who first met in school, old friends who share a guilty secret - old friends whose lives are changed when Lili suddenly confronts them and asks, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
The answer to this question - a question that has obsessed and almost destroyed Lili - is at the heart of Lace. As the reader travels from an elegant Swiss finishing school in Gstaad to the glittering places where the rich and successful congregate, the book traces not only the life of Lili herself - abandoned, seduced, exploited, but at last rising to triumph as a star - but the lives of the four women, one of whom is her mother.
The blurb actually goes on for several more paragraphs, and I was tempted to include them, because I wanted to point out a few things in there that make me wonder if whoever wrote the blurb actually read the book, but anyway.
I don't actually have all that much to say about the book, although I enjoyed it. It fits a formula, that of 3 or four women who meet in school and become close friends. They're all wealthy, except one, who either marries into wealth by the end or creates her own. One of the wealthy ones has been raised to feel perpetually inadequate. One of them's foreign. There's bound to be some exotic royalty (sometimes one of the women, sometimes someone else). And there's some sort of secret scandal, usually involving somebody's pregnancy. It's good light chick reading, although not as light as, say, the Shopaholic series.
This particular incarnation of that formula was actually quite good. Well-developed, believable characters, in well-written situations. I was starting to think Conran had issues with men, but all the girls eventually found love, and I guess we all go through a few Mr. Wrongs before we find Mr. Right.
One thing I did think was really kind of neat about this book was the way she depicted female friendship. In fiction, female friendships are almost always torn apart somehow when they feature so prominently in a story. The deeper the friendship is portrayed in the beginning, the more likely it is to fall apart by the end. This one didn't. The four women went their separate ways after school, but remained close friends who stayed in contact, visited often, and were always there for each other if one of them needed help. There was one blip between two of them, but as soon as they figured out that it was engineered by th guy involved, they immediately picked up where they left off, with no lingering feelings of resentment or suspicion. Right to the end, they protect each other. After Lili finds out which one is her mother, and wants to know who her father is, the mother hides the truth to avoid hurting both Lili and one of the other three (even though it was ancient history), and all three know she's lying, for various reasons, but instead of suspecting the worst, they believe that she has good reasons, and not one of them calls her on it. It's nice to see female friendship portrayed like that, because that really is how the really good ones are.
I've learned that there's a sequel, in which Lili goes looking for her father (the stated father is dead, so I guess she learns that that wasn't true after all?), and I think I'm going to read that, because there really were good reasons for her mother to keep that information to herself, so I'm actually quite curious how all that's going to go down.
Already a legend despite her youth, Lili is beautiful, passionate, notoriously temperamental... Each of the four has a reason to hate Lili. And each of them is astonished to see the others; for they are old friends who first met in school, old friends who share a guilty secret - old friends whose lives are changed when Lili suddenly confronts them and asks, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
The answer to this question - a question that has obsessed and almost destroyed Lili - is at the heart of Lace. As the reader travels from an elegant Swiss finishing school in Gstaad to the glittering places where the rich and successful congregate, the book traces not only the life of Lili herself - abandoned, seduced, exploited, but at last rising to triumph as a star - but the lives of the four women, one of whom is her mother.
The blurb actually goes on for several more paragraphs, and I was tempted to include them, because I wanted to point out a few things in there that make me wonder if whoever wrote the blurb actually read the book, but anyway.
I don't actually have all that much to say about the book, although I enjoyed it. It fits a formula, that of 3 or four women who meet in school and become close friends. They're all wealthy, except one, who either marries into wealth by the end or creates her own. One of the wealthy ones has been raised to feel perpetually inadequate. One of them's foreign. There's bound to be some exotic royalty (sometimes one of the women, sometimes someone else). And there's some sort of secret scandal, usually involving somebody's pregnancy. It's good light chick reading, although not as light as, say, the Shopaholic series.
This particular incarnation of that formula was actually quite good. Well-developed, believable characters, in well-written situations. I was starting to think Conran had issues with men, but all the girls eventually found love, and I guess we all go through a few Mr. Wrongs before we find Mr. Right.
One thing I did think was really kind of neat about this book was the way she depicted female friendship. In fiction, female friendships are almost always torn apart somehow when they feature so prominently in a story. The deeper the friendship is portrayed in the beginning, the more likely it is to fall apart by the end. This one didn't. The four women went their separate ways after school, but remained close friends who stayed in contact, visited often, and were always there for each other if one of them needed help. There was one blip between two of them, but as soon as they figured out that it was engineered by th guy involved, they immediately picked up where they left off, with no lingering feelings of resentment or suspicion. Right to the end, they protect each other. After Lili finds out which one is her mother, and wants to know who her father is, the mother hides the truth to avoid hurting both Lili and one of the other three (even though it was ancient history), and all three know she's lying, for various reasons, but instead of suspecting the worst, they believe that she has good reasons, and not one of them calls her on it. It's nice to see female friendship portrayed like that, because that really is how the really good ones are.
I've learned that there's a sequel, in which Lili goes looking for her father (the stated father is dead, so I guess she learns that that wasn't true after all?), and I think I'm going to read that, because there really were good reasons for her mother to keep that information to herself, so I'm actually quite curious how all that's going to go down.
October 14, 2012
The basic story line and plotting was OK. There were no moments of absolute wow or a desire that keep reading no matter what, but it was an interesting and engrossing read.
The major downfall for me was the timing of the story. The book is divided into about 11 or 12 parts, with no discernable reason for this division. A part does not solely concentrate on the actions or adventures of one of the five main women, not a one single part cover a specific time period. Instead you follow one woman for a while, hear some of her adventures and then skip over to another. There are no dates to identify when each section is taking place and often the age of the woman concerned is disregarded. The only timeline identifier is usually "two years later" or something similar. Quite often I was wondering two years later than what, when we last saw this woman or two years after the last section finished. It soon became apparent that each time you changed characters, you changed time periods. As there was often little interaction between the four women or mention of them in each others lives this made dovetailing where each section of the story fitted together rather difficult.
I also found it difficult to establish an emotional connection with any of the women involved. For the majority of the book there was nothing emotionally substantial. It was just descriptions of what happened, not how any of them felt about it. This could be because the book was written in third person with five lead characters. However this lack of connection made it hard for me to care about the outcome. The majority of the time I found the women to be uninspiring and self-absorbed. Rarely did they think beyond their own circumstances or question motives of the males around them, unless a reason to do so was thrust in their faces. For a book that appeared to be about the power and success of women, it very often showed these women as needing men in their lives to succeed and be happy.
The ending of the book appeared very sudden. The emotional attachement that was suddenly formed in the last chapter between all five women, seemed very rushed and unconvincing. I felt that it finished without answering any questions and leaving more issues to be resolved than had been hinted at during the entirety of the book.
In short, LACE has a confusing timeline and chronology, distant characters which is hard to form any attachement to and a hasty abrupt ending leaving more issues unresolved than not. I know there is a sequel to this book, but I am not in any hurry to spend any more time with these women. This is not a book I am in any hurry to read again, nor would I particularly recommend it to anyone of my acquaintance.
The major downfall for me was the timing of the story. The book is divided into about 11 or 12 parts, with no discernable reason for this division. A part does not solely concentrate on the actions or adventures of one of the five main women, not a one single part cover a specific time period. Instead you follow one woman for a while, hear some of her adventures and then skip over to another. There are no dates to identify when each section is taking place and often the age of the woman concerned is disregarded. The only timeline identifier is usually "two years later" or something similar. Quite often I was wondering two years later than what, when we last saw this woman or two years after the last section finished. It soon became apparent that each time you changed characters, you changed time periods. As there was often little interaction between the four women or mention of them in each others lives this made dovetailing where each section of the story fitted together rather difficult.
I also found it difficult to establish an emotional connection with any of the women involved. For the majority of the book there was nothing emotionally substantial. It was just descriptions of what happened, not how any of them felt about it. This could be because the book was written in third person with five lead characters. However this lack of connection made it hard for me to care about the outcome. The majority of the time I found the women to be uninspiring and self-absorbed. Rarely did they think beyond their own circumstances or question motives of the males around them, unless a reason to do so was thrust in their faces. For a book that appeared to be about the power and success of women, it very often showed these women as needing men in their lives to succeed and be happy.
The ending of the book appeared very sudden. The emotional attachement that was suddenly formed in the last chapter between all five women, seemed very rushed and unconvincing. I felt that it finished without answering any questions and leaving more issues to be resolved than had been hinted at during the entirety of the book.
In short, LACE has a confusing timeline and chronology, distant characters which is hard to form any attachement to and a hasty abrupt ending leaving more issues unresolved than not. I know there is a sequel to this book, but I am not in any hurry to spend any more time with these women. This is not a book I am in any hurry to read again, nor would I particularly recommend it to anyone of my acquaintance.
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