AustLit

'A comic romance set in a grand old house in the Tasmanian midlands. Philadelphia is a beautiful, thoroughly modern girl about town with a determination to choose her own destiny but the matchmakers are swarming. Her 80 year old Grandmother, Clarinda, is busy conspiring with Kaleen an upwardly mobile fashion designer from Melbourne, the two of them want to bring together money and breeding in the form of Algernon, Kaleen's dysfunctional mathematical genius of a son. In the meantime Philadelphia's Grandfather, Edgar, is also matchmaking and wants to team her up with the son of his World War II squadron leader and a member of the British aristocracy Sir Reginald Houghton-Smythe a globetrotting millionaire with a plum in his mouth and cholesterol clogging his veins. There is a spanner in the works however in the form a punk rocker from London by name of Johnnie Compost self-proclaimed leader of The Great Unwashed. Mayhem and pandemonium ensue and is all seen through the satirical eyes of Lavenham a legal type from Hobart whose idea of a good night out is a good night in.' (Publisher's blurb)