Title: Diverting but derivative
Product review: I found this to be an enthralling page-turner, and I had to restrain myself from reading ahead, but after only a couple of chapters I had a strong sense of deja vu (deja lu?). That the book draws significantly from "Brideshead Revisited" is noted early and often by the author herself, in a disappointingly obvious manner. But "Other People's Rules" also seems to worship at a less-exalted altar, Dominick Dunne's semi-trashy "A Season in Purgatory," a roman a clef loosely based on the Martha Moxley murder and its Kennedy connection. As in "Brideshead" and "Purgatory," the first-person narrator in "Rules" is a middle-class but comparatively impoverished young person drawn in by the privilege and eccentricities of a wealthy family; however, "Rules" resembles "Purgatory" not merely in theme but in plot points as well. While the similarities may be entirely coincidental, they diminished my enjoyment of the book.
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