Is This Allowed?

It begins cynically enough. A bored writer, churning out frivolous books for a quick buck, pays for a beautiful girl to be his companion for a week in Ibiza. And at first, she appalls him. Like other girls of her sort, she doesn t know how to behave, and while he is proud to be seen with her for her beauty, he despises her for her intellect. She s there to be used. And she, he has been warned, will use him mercilessly. But that isn t quite how things turn out. For when he s with her in the nightclubs and bars of Ibiza, when she s high and outrageous, she acts on him like the most powerful drug. And as the game- playing, the ritual jealousies, the dishonesties, continue, an addiction begins to take hold of him. Onlywith his Princess can he be truly alive. What began as a seven night stand, becomes an obsessive, painful affair, recalled by him as he writes the account of the eventeifiat would destroy her. Like any addict, there are no lengths he will not go to to satisfy his the betrayal of a fifteen-year old relationship; the squandering of his savings; the buying of cocaine to keep her in the happy state that is so necessary to him. But what was a beautiful dream in Ibiza, turns into ugly reality in London, as she is drawn into a squalid society scandal, and as her addiction takes a vicious and disastrous turn. In his bestselling THE ENGLISH WAY OF DOING THINGS William Donaldson hilariously chronicled the manners and mores of a seamy world of pimps, prostitutes and drug-pushers. IS THIS ALLOWED? is a powerful vision of the dark side of that world, where the rich and privileged rub shoulders with the demi-monde, where the search for kicks is a full-time occupation. It is a novel of addiction and obsession, and of manipulation and betrayal. It is both satire and tragedy, told with brutal honesty and sharp wit.