Have you read ... Forever Amber?

    I do like to know what characters in novels are reading, though it's not often that we are told, but happily in The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley (the eagerly awaited second in the Flavia de Luce series) which I am enjoying just now, we learn that Daffy is reading Forever Amber. "What's it about?" asks Flavia. "Flies in sap", is her sister's helpful response.

   I recognised the book's title and was vaguely aware that it had been made into a film, but I couldn't have told you any more about it than that so I went to look it up. Written by the American Kathleen Winsor and published in 1945 (Daffy has it in 1950), it's a whopping 992 pages long in the current Penguin edition, though that's apparently only a fifth of the original, unedited size, and it has sold 3 million copies worldwide. It sounds like the ultimate bodice-ripper; set in England in the 1660s, its heroine is Amber St. Clair, rising through society by virtue (or perhaps not!) of romantic dalliances of one sort or another. Fourteen US states banned the book for its sexually explicit content, but post-war women loved it, as this article by Elaine Showalter relates.

    Have you read it?