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Scandalous Women

A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Mad Men meets the world of publishing in international bestselling author Gill Paul's new novel about Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann, two dynamic, groundbreaking writers renowned for their scandalous and controversial novels, and the beleaguered young editorial assistant who introduces them.

1966, NYC: Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls hits the bookstores and she is desperate for a bestseller. It's steamy, it's a page-turner, but will it make the big money she needs? In London, Jackie Collins's racy The World Is Full of Married Men launches her career. But neither author is prepared for the price they will pay for being women who dare to write about sex.

Jacqueline and Jackie are lambasted by the literary establishment, deluged with hate mail, and even condemned by feminists. In public, both women shoulder the outcry with dignity; in private, they are crumbling—particularly since they have secrets they don't want splashed across the front pages.

1965, NYC: College graduate Nancy White is excited to take up her dream job at a Manhattan publishing house, but she could never be prepared for the rampant sexism she will encounter. While working on Valley of the Dolls, she becomes friends with Jacqueline Susann, and, after reaching out to Jackie Collins about a US deal, she is responsible for the two authors meeting.

Will the two Jackies clash as they race to top the charts? Will Nancy achieve her ambition of becoming an editor, despite all the men determined to hold her back? Three women struggle to succeed in a man's world, while desperately trying to protect those they love the most.

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    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2024

      Paul has created an engaging, innovative, and quicksilver-paced novel about the friendship between two titans of blockbuster fiction, Jacqueline Susann (1918-74) and Jackie Collins (1937-2015), although there is no record of them ever meeting in real life. Fans of both authors will find much to enjoy in this overall historically accurate portrait of two women who wrote sexy, compulsively readable novels and were castigated by critics while appealing to millions of people who didn't previously buy or read books. Paul (who previously fictionalized Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden in A Beautiful Rival) cleverly uses Valley of the Dolls' format of alternating chapters focusing on the three main characters: Jacqueline, Jackie, and Nancy, an ambitious publishing novice who champions and befriends the two authors. Through Nancy, readers meet numerous people who would later inspire characters in Susann and Collins's novels. There is plenty of real-life drama for Paul to empathetically explore, including Susann's cancer battles and financial concern for her son, whose autism she hid, and Collins's troubled first marriage to a man who was biploar and later died by suicide. VERDICT A juicy and fun novel about the women who pioneered the sexy page-turner with Valley of the Dolls and Hollywood Wives.--Kevin Howell

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      July 1, 2024
      Paul's latest historical novel featuring real-life women (after A Beautiful Rival, 2023) focuses on authors Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, who turned the 1960s publishing world upside down with their best-sellers featuring independent women having sex and the bad men who love them. In 1965, Nancy White arrives in New York, hoping to find a career in publishing. After a humiliating interview, she ends up working with publisher Bernard Geis, who has just received Susann's sophomore novel, Valley of the Dolls, which he thinks is unpublishable but which Nancy champions. Meanwhile, in London, Collins is dealing with a newborn, a failing marriage, and writer's block. Both she and Susann want to write best-sellers to secure their future--Collins for her independence, Susann for her institutionalized autistic son--and they know writing stories women want to read is the way to do it. Alternating perspectives between Nancy and ""the two Jackies,"" Paul spins a tale of sexism, women's empowerment, and Pucci pantsuits, resulting in a lively novel that imagines a glamorous, romantic world while revealing its troubling underbelly.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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