Hunting Unicorns

by Bella Pollen Narrated by Christopher Cazanove, Gabrielle de Cuir

Overview

The patrician Bevan family clings to British tradition while wrestling with taxes, tree blight, and family skeletons.

Rory, the youngest son, runs a business that rents out mansions for weddings and tours to help the owners pay upkeep on their dilapidated estates. Enter Maggie, an American TV journalist hoping to find something disreputable to write home about. Sent to London to do an exposé on the aristocracy, she hires Rory to get her access to the most private families. The two immediately clash, bickering until a romance springs up where it seemed least likely.

A delightfully funny love story exploring loyalty and family, Hunting Unicorns is ultimately about having the courage to risk everything in the pursuit of what really counts.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Pollen's flashy, witty, urbane romantic comedy digs affectionately at the blue-blooded English. Assigned by current affairs show Newsline to determine if the English aristocracy is "a dying breed who after centuries of appalling behaviour were finally getting their comeuppance," American journalist Maggie Monroe enlists the help of the London agency Stately Locations to meet and interview the well-born owners of those homes. Beleaguered Rory Jones runs the agency, which nets needy owners of crumbling great houses tourist money; unbeknownst to Maggie, he's also the heir of the exalted Bevan family thanks to the untimely death of his older brother, Daniel. Maggie and her film crew brush up on Burke's Peerage and invade the English countryside, running over peacocks and smoking pot in pricelessly appointed bedrooms. Despite Rory's injunction, Maggie ventures to the Bevan mansion and wins over Rory's dotty parents. As cousin to the queen, Rory's father, Earl Alistair, is "pure Newsline Gold... and a total anachronism." He's also an impoverished and rather sweet alcoholic-and the son of a Nazi collaborationist. Pollen (All About Men) ventures into these and other dicey areas dealing with the old aristocracy (i.e., sex) in a most engaging, irreverent manner, using alternate points of view for Maggie and Daniel, who, from beyond the grave, observes the action with wry detachment. Pollen's characterizations veer into the stereotypical, but charmingly so; in the end, Maggie and Rory are two young people in search of authentic experience, despite differences of birth and country. Agent, Sarah Lutyens at Lutyens and Rubinstein (U.K.). (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Tama Janowitz

"Readers who have not yet discovered Bella Pollen will be delighted with her witty take on men, women, and English and American life, culture, and morays....."

FEB/MAR 06 - AudioFile

Christopher Cazanove reads the part of Rory, an English aristocrat who sells tours of grand homes. Gabrielle de Cuir reads Maggie, an American journalist who's doing a TV puff piece about British aristocrats. Managing his own kind makes Rory irritable. And Maggie, who’d rather be reporting from the front lines of a war, is irritable, too. Sparks fly, followed by romance. This two-voice reading works quite well. Cazanove, who can sound tetchily upper crust with the best of them, brings a world-weary drawl to his interpretation. De Cuir is up-tempo and admirably quick with the zingers that pierce Rory's reserve. This title is tough on British aristos, but easy on the ear. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169905151
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

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