There's been a lot of po-faced sniffing over Fay Weldon's new book, The Bulgari Connection. It's been all over the broadsheets that she was paid by Bulgari to write a novel that included 12 mentions of their brand name. Figures vary as to how much Weldon bagged from the Italian jewellery firm, but the general tone is that while it is perfectly acceptable for a novelist to accept any amount of money from a publisher - conveniently forgetting that most are vast multinationals - it's not quite the thing to truck so obviously with filthy commerce.
Large chunks of the novel now read like that journalist/advertiser hybrid, the advertorial. To be fair to the reader, HarperCollins should probably have put "commercial feature" on the cover of the book, especially as the paid-for brand name is also there.
Weldon took the loot and produced a Fay Weldon novel. There's a faithless older husband, a younger more attractive woman who snares him, the spurned wife who takes a younger lover, and one of Weldon's favourite themes: a particularly useless psychiatrist.
Fans will recognise the types from her other novels, just as they'll recognise it when the novel crosses the line into kooksville. Tired old fiftysomething Grace, the ex-wife, begins a heady love affair with handsome Walter, a young man more than 20 years her junior. During the affair, much to the amazement of her doctors and her son, the ageing process goes into reverse, so that she starts to look younger and Walter starts to age considerably. It's a typical Weldon flight of fancy.
The novel is set in London - all the better to be near the Bulgari shop on Bond Street - among the moneyed nouveaus and well-heeled titled set - who else could afford the rather flamboyant baubles?
The jewellery is not simply mentioned (30 times for those who are counting) but often prices are given, manufacturing techniques described and designs minutely detailed. There's quite a bit of extra information on the many services the jeweller offers. It all becomes more than a bit tiresome, and is so clunky that even a reader who didn't know the writer had been paid would quickly start to wonder.
Contemporary novelists use brands all the time to give readers a quick fix on their characters. One view is that this shows that the novelist is plugged into the zeitgeist. Another view is that they're just being lazy. Such is the power of the brand that describing a character as wearing Manolo Blahniks or driving a Ferrari says more about that character's aspirations and financial status in a couple of words than many well-crafted paragraphs.
Weldon is clearly having a great time in the book. She breezes though a not-unfamiliar story about familiar types of people and if the book was a lurid-covered paperback it would be required holiday reading. As an old advertising hand - Weldon started her career as an advertising copywriter - she's having a great laugh at the client's expense and hoping that they won't notice.
The nicest person in the book, Grace, was once offered a present of a Bulgari necklace, but thought it a hopeless waste of money and refused.
The only two women who now wear it are a titled lady - who has had hers for years but is now so focused on her charitable works that she spurns all ostentatious purchases - and the monstrous Doris - the woman who ran off with Grace's husband, a millionaire builder and a self-professed cultural philistine. It's his nouveau and rather grubby money that goes over the counter in Bond Street.
If I were Bulgari, I'd be asking for my money back.
Bernice Harrison is an Irish Times columnist
