Betsy Butser, Canadian Conservative (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

The story of four girlhood friends, Betsy Butser, Gisella Gutzer, Trudi May-Yamoto, and Rati Ringer-Letz, now wealthy women in their 40s. Before hurrying to the airport to meet her mystery-writer friend Trudi, Betsy fires her cleaning lady in a quarrel over Betsy’s one-night stand. It’s November 2004, and Trudi is fleeing George W. Bush’s America. After 20 years in the States, she is returning to Calgary, despite the racism she faced growing up there. The same day, news arrives of the death of Betsy’s MP, a married man who was Gisella’s lover. In the prime of life, and with time on her hands, Betsy decides to stand for the Conservative nomination for the by-election to fill the empty seat. Rati manages Betsy’s run for the nomination. But among her opponents she finds her former cleaning lady and a racist scion of an establishment family who mistreated Trudi as a guest at Rati’s exclusive club. Will Rati and Betsy score the nomination? Meanwhile Betsy has to deal with a new romance involving her lesbian country-singer daughter, with her evangelical daughter’s third pregnancy in five years, with hosting Butser family events and drumming up charitable donations in the Christmas season of 2004, with a mystery writers’ conference being put together by Trudi, with wreaking vengeance on an uncharitable libertarian former lover. The novel also reflects back on the friends’ earlier years. Betsy drags her little brother Bobby from their burning home, and is comforted by Gisella. The girls play superheroines on missions against enemy schoolmates. The friends reluctantly attend a Swiss boarding school that features school trips to Paris fashion shows. The friends make the news for disrupting a couple of these fashion shows. In the course of the story, the novel considers, not without mockery, Canadian conservative takes on taxes, Canadian-American relations, family values, the arts, gender, race, religion, and charity.