Jacqueline Susann accurately be described as a highly effective sedative, a living doll." Despite the poor reviews, the book was a commercial juggernaut. On May 8, 1966, in its ninth week on the list, the book reached #1 on the "New York Times" Best Seller List, where it remained for 28 consecutive weeks. With a total of 65 weeks on the list, the book became the best selling novel of 1966. By the time of Susann's death in 1974, it had entered the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the best selling novel in publishing history, with more than 17 million copies
What a Carve Up! (novel) employing multiple narrative styles, different perspectives, movement between first- and third-person narrative voices and a highly fragmented timeline. Robert McCrum called it "the finest English satire from the 1980s - a memorable and explicit commentary on Thatcherism." In 2015, the author published a related novel set in the early 21st century, "Number 11". The latter novel is sometimes described as a sequel but elsewhere using other phrases such as a "sequel, of sorts." The relationship between the two books is suggested in the later novel (describing the relationship between two films, "What A Carve-Up!" and "What A Whopper", which are