David Desmond’s 2008 novel The Misadventures of Oliver Booth: Life in the Lap of Luxury is easy, breezy and fun, which are also the qualities people go to South Florida for.
The story
Oliver Booth wants more than anything to join Palm Beach high society. He has the wrong personality for it: arrogant, badly dressed and running an antique shop stuffed with gilded reproductions he passes off as fine French furniture. By luck rather than merit, he hires Bernard Dauphin, a young French waiter from an exclusive club, as his clerk. When a wealthy society doyenne recognizes Bernard’s taste, she sends both men to Paris to furnish her estate. Oliver’s humiliations multiply on both sides of the Atlantic.
A well-made target
Satire works only if we do not feel too sorry for its target, and Desmond makes sure we do not. Most of Oliver’s misfortunes are of his own making, and the reader is happy to watch them unfold. The real protagonist is Bernard, whose common sense and decency anchor the comedy and give the book its warmth. Publicity for the novel compared it to Voltaire, which is ambitious; the comparison to a well-told comedy of manners is closer.
The insider view
Desmond, a clinical psychologist who has lived in Palm Beach and Paris, writes with an insider’s eye for the trophy wives, idle heirs and self-important decorators of both worlds. The details of the antiques trade, including how fakes get passed off as the real thing, are among the book’s most enjoyable passages. The novel won several independent book awards and was a finalist for a Benjamin Franklin Award in humor.
Verdict
Not deep, and not trying to be. A pleasant vacation read for anyone who enjoys watching social climbers slip.
Sources: The Misadventures of Oliver Booth, Greenleaf Book Group; The Misadventures of Oliver Booth, Goodreads.
