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Rereadings: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books |
 | | Winsor had used Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year as a major source, and made the centrepiece of her book Amber's graphic and metaphoric encounter with the epidemic. |
 | | Winsor's descriptions of Amber's clothes are marvels of fashion pornography that must have seemed even more illicit in the days of rationing and austerity; at a society raffle, Amber wears a gown of cloth-of-gold, an emerald velvet cloak lined in sable, with a spray of emeralds pinned to her sable muff. |
 | | The novel is a celebration of London - "London," Winsor writes, "stinking dirty noisy brawling colourful - was the heart of England, and its citizens ruled the nation." She captures the look, sound, smell, and idiom of the court, the slums, the brothel, the salon, the theatre, the coffee-house. |
| books.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,12084,771837,00.html (1533 words) |
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