Now in paperback, a novel which explores the lives of three generations of women as one of them embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Originally published in hardback in 1985. From the author of AFTER PURPLE.
Wendy Perriam Books
Wendy Perriam's writing is profoundly shaped by her life's stark contrasts, from rigid convent discipline to the wildness of the sixties, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood. Her novels and short stories are celebrated for their power to disturb, divert, and shock, delving into the darker, often contradictory aspects of human experience. Perriam views writing as a space for 'shadow selves,' allowing her to embody disparate identities, from the staid matron to the 'slag,' the organized author to the 'madwoman in a straitjacket.' This exploration of complex and often unsettling facets of existence makes her work compelling and thought-provoking for readers.
Cuckoo
- 320 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Frances is on a fertility drug and sizing up the milkman. Charles is struggling between shocked disapproval and guilty desire for his own illegitimate daughter - a fifteen year old secret who arrives and takes over the nest. Their sterile and rule-ridden marriage (where even sex requires timetable and rule-book) begins to fall apart. In desperation, Frances flees to her feckless lover, Ned, and in trying to use him as a stud, finds she is used and abused herself. By then, the cuckoos - and the cuckolds - are really coming home to roost!
Three generations of women, all with very different ideas as to what constitutes the good life. An Enormous Yes poses fundamental questions about what constitutes living well, and the choices we are forced to make between wants and needs, ideals and rights; exploring the conflicting claims of entitlement versus duty and responsibility.
Lying
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
Alison Ward, an idealistic young editor in a publishing house, falls obsessionally in love with an older man, James Egerton, seemingly out of reach on both social and religious grounds. Why should a Cambridge-educated accountant from a well-to-do, ultra-Catholic family be attracted to someone of modest means and background who has rarely set foot inside a church (and whose father moreover dismisses all religion as claptrap)? Against the odds, she wins his love but, five years into their marriage, finds herself leading a double life, upholding "truths" in public which privately she abhors. The strain of this deception, coupled with deep sadness at their failure to conceive a longed-for child, eventually leads her into an affair. As lie piles on lie, she is horrified at her own faithlessness. Why, when she loves her devout and devoted husband, is she sloping off with a scruffy, layabout barman she doesn't even like? She begins to see falsehood everywhere—in advertising and politics, even science and medicine—and above all in the constricting religion of her husband and his family. Yet James's faith is an essential part of him, his virtue and integrity the very qualities that first attracted her; thus the discovery that even he is entangled in deception comes as a profound shock
Michael, Michael
- 373 pages
- 14 hours of reading
Charts the rites of passage of a young girl obsessed with three Michaels, and her journey through gloriously uninhibited physical passion to bizarre consummation and sacrament.
Heißhunger Frauen. - bk1910; Bastei Verlag Gustav Lübbe; Wandy Perriam; pocket_book; 1997
Traumkind gesucht - bk997; Bastei Lübbe; Wendy Perriam; pocket_book; 1994
