The Nudists

Guy Bellamy’s fourth novel, ‘The Nudists’ appeared in hardback in 1986, and in paperback in 1987. It is a lazy summer of beach umbrellas and blistering heat. The sea is warm, the sky is blue and life is good or is it? The Venables sun-drenched honeymoon takes a new direction when bridegroom Simon meets a former Page Three girl relaxing in a Mediterranean bar. And surprises of a less pleasant nature are in store for young advertising millionaire Ben Brock when the pharmaceuticals market begins to shrink. The opening line of the novel is a golden hook: “Simon Venables, honeymooning under the scorching Mediterranean sun, has just seen the woman he should have married. She is a pneumatic blonde called Pym whose two page-three assets leave Simon sick with lust. But Pym is married to dynamic Ben Brock, a brash adman, brimming with cash from the lucrative pharmaceutical market…” Meanwhile, penniless Nick Bannerman, furiously writing a book on womans inhumanity to man, receives his due and more besides as his past catches up with him and his future begins to expand. When the three parties find themselves together on a vacation to remember, all is revealed, and their crossed destinies become further entwined, for better, for worse, both richer and poorer. In this masterful comic invention, displaying all his pungent wit and subtle venom so characteristic of his earlier novels, Guy Bellamy strips the veneer off life in the last quarter of the twentieth century and, once again, succeeds brilliantly. Reviewers once again heaped praise: “It is rare for a book to be comic, happy and readable all at once, but Guy Bellamy’s “The Nudists”, is just that. Daily Telegraph Hardback ISBN 0436039427 / Paperback ISBN 0140097724