I have to say, I like my literature distinctly middlebrow. I'm far too old for Chick Lit. I really do not want to read novels about the Yummy Mummies of Clapham; it's bad enough having almost to share a postcode with them. No thanks.
But whatever possessed me to buy a book with "Toyboy" in the title. I simply don't do Younger Men. I did, sort of, go out with a younger man once. Well, maybe a handful of times in several years. A couple of years my junior. Really nice guy, actually, and the last time I saw him, on a 45 bus, I still that felt that frisson. But what attracted em wasn't his youthfulness, anyway, but his comparative maturity. What ended it; it having hardly begun was his immaturity, his inability to commit (he's married with at least one kid now).
But me, I do older men. Why, I don't know. Basically, I always have. Even random strangers: older men are such fun to flirt with, younger men can't - it's all about them, busy checking out whether you fulfil their magazine-inspired checklist. Older men, the wise ones that is, they look into your eyes.
So this self-centred rich snob keeps shagging younger men, and then wrote a book about it. I have to say, it was well written in that it romped along. But I didn't like the character at all. I have to assume it was fiction, even though she made out it was real, with just the names changed. I just feel that the situations where she described being picked up rather stretched the bounds of credibility. Unless she wore a sign saying 'Desperate for a ffff' and, frankly, who wants to ffff a bloke who responds positively to desperation. As for the bit where she got mugged at gunpoint, come on, do me a favour: guns aren't used like that
She rejected one man because he lived in Clapham and travelled halfway across London on public transport. Clearly, she's an idiot. And a drunk-driver. She lives in Maida Vale, in a flat, for heaven's sake, hardly something to be snobbish about. And doesn't seem to have the slightest scruples about driving after an evening's drinking. All her so-called friends are loaded, and it's pretty clear she just hangs round them to ligg and freeload. Claims to be educated and experienced but clearly has no opinions or no knowledge with which to form the opinions.
It's rare that I have read a book where I took such a dislike to a main character who is supposed to be sympathetic. I rejoiced every time her toyboys dumped her. It seems that she scrubbed up well, but she must have been tedious company. She judged everybody by appearances. the most hilarious thing was when a one-night stand went disastrously wrong because she farted in bed - when the bloke was asleep. Frankly, if the guy is so shallow he dumps you because of that, he probably isn't worth pining over, anyway. But I doubt it was that reason he dumped her - she was an easy lay, he'd had her, it was time to move on.
I suppose she validated herself by her obsession with her appearance and her clothes, and it was hilarious how she equated 'richer' with 'better' even though the 'richer' came over as pompous self-satisfied bores. And as I say, it was very well written and also well edited, but it did nothing to attract me to toyboys. Give me an older man any time.
And it looks like she's written another one