Review - The Rich are Different - Susan Howatch

This book was different to my earlier reads of Susan Howatch which deals with the Anglican clergy and its bishops and provides a glimpse into lives which may not be
very well known to the average reader.

This book deals with a high flying American banker Paul and his fascination for Europe and all things European, his marriage and his English mistress Dinah. These are the two main characters of the book and it is their story in the main then going on to the sequences of the story after Paul's death and the ascendancy of his heir Cornelius and of the strange twist when Dinah who was Paul's mistress falls in love with a protege of Paul's and marries him.

The Rich are Different deals with love as well as hate, murder, suicides, kindness as well as revenge and revenge which is calculated and far seeking which contributes to the twist in the plot. It also proves that the rich are not different at all in that everyone feels ultimately the same - whether its love, hurt, remorse, or anger. Whether the title is meant to be what it is or whether it is meant to show as a contrary point of view that the rich are not different I do not know.

The book begins in the benign period of 1922 and ends in the turbulent 1940's covering both the stock market crash in America as well as the beginning of Hitler's supremacy in Europe and how it affected not just England but America as well and the way it also affects the people of this story.

The book was a heavy one of just over 700 pages but I did not find it burdensome. The period it covered was one which I have not read much of and I found it both descriptive and informative - the love story was intense and so naturally was the break ups! A good read for me but you have got to be patient with this book as it is the ending which makes it different.