''The Bulgari Connection'' is a
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
novel by
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon CBE, FRSL (born Franklin Birkinshaw; 22 September 1931 – 4 January 2023) was an English author, essayist and playwright.
Over the course of her 55-year writing career, she published 31 novels, including ''Puffball'' (1980), '' Th ...
that became notorious for its commercial tie-in: in exchange for an undisclosed fee from the Italian jewellery company
Bulgari, Weldon was required to mention the name of the jeweler at least 12 times - which was more than exceeded by the author. The 34 mentions appear in sentences such as "'A Bulgari necklace in the hand is worth two in the bush', said Doris" or "They snuggled together happily for a bit, all passion spent; and she met him at Bulgari that lunchtime".
Such heavy use of
product placement was not only a novelty in literature but also unprecedented for a published, established author (''The Bulgari Connection'' was her 22nd novel), and a front-page article was published about it in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', quoting such writers as
Rick Moody
Hiram Frederick Moody III (born October 18, 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel ''The Ice Storm'', a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 19 ...
,
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explored the relations between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass med ...
,
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon ( ;
born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, gr ...
, and
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson (born 27 August 1959) is an English writer. Her first book, '' Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'', was a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against convention. Other novels explore gender pola ...
.
The story concerns a character named Grace McNab Salt, and her re-integration into high society after ending a term in prison that she served for attempting to run her husband's mistress Doris Dubois over with her car.
References
External links
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2000 British novels
Novels by Fay Weldon
Atlantic Monthly Press books
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