Scruples

This was Judith Krantz' groundbreaking novel which foreshadowed the glamor obsessed 1980's. Described by the author as a, "chocolate cake of a novel," Scruples brings the reader into the inner workings of fashion, retail, and the personal lives of the very rich.

The novel details the life story of Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop as she goes from being a fat "poor relation" of an aristocratic Boston Brahman family to a thin, stylish woman who is left a vast fortune by the death of her elderly husband.

Because of her middle name, she is nick named Honey. After high school, she goes to Paris as a fat girl, totally unaccepted by any of her peers in Boston. There she begins a transformation and loses weight while on the limited diet of her host family. Simultaneously, she learns Parisian style under the guidance of the woman she lives with.

After a year, she returns to America and decides to call herself Billy, as a nickname of her first name. She stuns all Boston with her new look and then moves to New York to attend secretarial school. After graduating, Billy gets a job for Ikehorn Enterprises and during a business meeting in Bermuda, she sleeps with and subsequently marries the much older CEO. The next period of her life seems to be the happiest as she and her husband Ellis live a glamorous life filled with parties, homes all over the world, and regular appearances on the Best Dressed List. Ellis has a stroke and they move to Bel Air for health reasons.

Billy lives as a recluse in their enormous house and eventually Ellis dies. After that, she needs something to do with her life, so she decides to open a luxury botique called Scruples. She hires Valentine O'Neil to make original couture on site as well as Spider Elliot as Style Director. During the novel, a separate storyline has been Valentine's life as an understudy fashion designer to the House of Prince in New York, and Spider's career as a photographer.

The story develops around Billy's second marriage to Vito Orsini, a film producer, and then around the Oscars. The store makes many of the outfits for the Oscars and a subplot revolves around Billy's new friend Dolly Moon, a flamboyant supporting actress in Vito's current film project, Mirrors. This plot develops as Price Waterhouse is burglarized so that it becomes known that Mirrors will win the Oscar for Best Picture. The story ends at the Oscars with Billy (but not Vito) knowing that their film will win, as she contemplates her life while wearing a famous pair of ear rings given to her by her first husband.

The novel is an education unto itself as Krantz uses her own expertise to describe all the working details of each city, industry, and social class that she describes. The book also gives a complete view of all aspects of the lives of the characters including inner private thoughts and intimate descriptions of their sexual lives. While some may consider this part of the novel to be pornographic, it really isn't when one considers that everything is described in such detail that it would be more of a plot hole to leave any of it unspoken. The reader feels as if they are experiencing the lives of the characters, to the author's credit. Krantz uses her excellent magazine writing skills to make such detail seem exhilarating, never tedious. This book is unique as a true novel that is also a true page turner.