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| Shire Hell | 
 enlarge | Author: Rachel Johnson
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £6.98 (100%)
New (27) from £1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 48811
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141035692
EAN: 9780141035697
ASIN: 0141035692
Publication Date: May 15, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Everyone in my dorm has read it June 19, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am not usually very good at reading anything other than Harry Potter but my mother bought Notting Hell, the prequel to this, and I read it and enjoyed it so much. This has just the same sort of momentum with things happening in every paragraph all keeping the story going so you can't put it down. It is really funny and is about the sort of people who have come from London to live in the country and are carrying on with their status-checks and trying to be greener and cooler than each other but never relaxing and just enjoying being in nature. Some of them completely miss the point of the countryside.Some of the characters are really funny. There is a love story about someone near my own age as well as a good love story about someone in her late thirties but everyone in the cast is very witty/glamorous or interesting in some other way and Rachel Johnson manages to be rude in a very subtle way about the snobbery. Her writing is a kind of non cruel teasing about people's weaknesses but it is full of really up to the moment jokes about fashions in furniture, clothes, lifestyles, food and people who want to be green. EVeryone in my dorm has read it.
good fun, dreadful people June 18, 2008
The town and country set have long needed a send-up, and Johnson is the ideal writer to take over from Jilly Cooper in this field. Mimi, the former chronicler of Notting Hell has sold up for a mere 2 million and moved to Home Farm, a chaotic Dorsetshire farmhouse which does not bear comparison with her friend Rose's immaculate one. Her children are not pleased (I especially enjoyed her daughter's complaints on "gurl" about the dreariness of it all, which greatly resemble my own petal's moans)and the contrast between visiting fairs with knitted yoghurt and city slicker pursuits is wittily described.
But what appalling people! The lazy, hypochondriac Pierre, who carries a log around in order not to be asked to do anything by his enrage wife is one thing; the multimillionaire who describes himself as a "Jewray Henry" another. If these are the kind of snobs who set up their own literary festival and who smugly pat themselves on the back for having wind-farms then the guillotine can't come here too soon. I'm sorry the Johnson didn't turn her pen to the contrast between the real poverty in such areas and the kind of idiots who fret over the choice between Boden and Barbour. Less name-checks and more of the genuine venom of Notting Hell would have made it a stronger sequel.
 Not as good as Notting Hell June 17, 2008
This one is not as good as Notting Hell. The cast of characters is a bit confusing and hard to keep straight. Notting Hell seemed more original and genuinely humorous than this sequel. It's enjoyable, but disappointing in many small ways.
shire pleasure June 8, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Read Notting Hell and loved it and was so glad to see the 'sequel'! I'm not even close to the have yachts and grab scraps of Boden at the NCT nearly new sale but find both books such delicious sheer escapism that it's impossible not to snap them up. I saw a quote from Jilly Cooper on the cover of Notting Hell and with Shire Hell it's hard not to imagine Rachel Johnson taking over from her as queen of the town and country menage-a-many. Perfect holiday reading, and a real treat for a harassed, credit-crunched mum-of-two. More please!
Shire fun June 3, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Rachel has done it again. This time though she has transported her gang from W11 to rural Dorset. The plot is fun, the characters are well thought out and her desciptions are totally & utterly spot on. Rachel just "gets" the people. Shire Hell is an easy read. I loved it and thought it was better than Notting Hell. I live in W11 so I also get it. Do buy it it is a feel good read. Hoping your next offering is as good Rachel
S Garrett ( a fellow W11 Babe)
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