Mavis Cheek

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Patrick Parker's Progress: Description:
This really is delightful stuff. With Patrick Parker's Progress, Mavis Cheek demonstrates once again that she is one of the wittiest and most enjoyable of writers, with a grasp of modern social comedy that puts many of her peers in the shade. Those who consider their dealings in love and sex to have been somewhat fraught will recognise many moments here. The year is 1940, and the city of Coventry is in flames. One child miraculously escapes the flames, and is sent to London. This is Mavis Cheek's protagonist, the eponymous Patrick Parker, who has a shining future ahead of him. He is to be an architect in the vein of his idol Brunel, and build great civic structures. But things will not go as smoothly as Patrick might wish: his relationship with the determined Audrey Wapshott has seemed to be the perfect choice--she adores him, and their destinies appear to be interlinked. But Patrick then does the unthinkable--he dumps Audrey to take up with a woman who will be able to advance his career. Audrey leaves for Paris, and begins to forge a new life--and when Audrey and Patrick meet again, there will be significant changes ahead in both their lives. As in the equally delightful The Sex Life of My Aunt, Cheek has total command of the pitfalls of human relationships--her characters (both beautifully characterised) bounce off each other in highly diverting ways, but not at the expense of a plausible narrative. Comic this may be, but it plays fair by its own internal rules. The observation here is spot on, and this is highly enjoyable fare. --Barry Forshaw

Title: Patrick Parker's Progress: Description:
This really is delightful stuff. With Patrick Parker's Progress, Mavis Cheek demonstrates once again that she is one of the wittiest and most enjoyable of writers, with a grasp of modern social comedy that puts many of her peers in the shade. Those who consider their dealings in love and sex to have been somewhat fraught will recognise many moments here. The year is 1940, and the city of Coventry is in flames. One child miraculously escapes the flames, and is sent to London. This is Mavis Cheek's protagonist, the eponymous Patrick Parker, who has a shining future ahead of him. He is to be an architect in the vein of his idol Brunel, and build great civic structures. But things will not go as smoothly as Patrick might wish: his relationship with the determined Audrey Wapshott has seemed to be the perfect choice--she adores him, and their destinies appear to be interlinked. But Patrick then does the unthinkable--he dumps Audrey to take up with a woman who will be able to advance his career. Audrey leaves for Paris, and begins to forge a new life--and when Audrey and Patrick meet again, there will be significant changes ahead in both their lives. As in the equally delightful The Sex Life of My Aunt, Cheek has total command of the pitfalls of human relationships--her characters (both beautifully characterised) bounce off each other in highly diverting ways, but not at the expense of a plausible narrative. Comic this may be, but it plays fair by its own internal rules. The observation here is spot on, and this is highly enjoyable fare. --Barry Forshaw

Title: Yesterday's Houses: Description:
When sixteen-year-old Marianne Flowers is invited to a party in a genteel house she has no idea that the house and what she experiences there - including the stately bathroom - will change her life. Not to mention the boy who introduces her to red win, sophisticated conversation and an apparently liberated future. But marriage to Charles turns out to be far from liberating .....

Title: The Sex Life Of My Aunt: Description:
After a traumatic and poverty-stricken childhood, Dilys, the heroine of Mavis Cheek's novel The Sex Life of My Aunt, has led an ideal existence for the past 30 years. Her devoted and successful husband Francis has paid the bills, kept her in fine clothes, indulged her fantasies about writing a book. She's wanted for nothing. Until one day, after a funeral, she finds herself in tears on a railway station, and a handsome young stranger offers her a handkerchief. The innocence of this brief encounter swiftly turns into a hideous campaign of deceit, as Dilys is sucked into an intense love affair, and experiences heights of passion she'd always believed beyond her reach. But the lies she must tell to sustain it lead Dilys to make some shocking discoveries about her own past. The incorrigible Aunt Eliza of the book's title might be described as a "national treasure". So indeed, might the novel itself. Its cast--composed of well-meaning husbands, earnest radicals in bedsits, redoubtable old ladies in Lichfield--is vivid, irresistible, yet utterly familiar. Its backdrop of local trattorias, mini-breaks and Dorset holiday cottages is as comforting as a much-loved cardigan. But this is how--like Barbara Pym before her--Mavis Cheek establishes herself as a genius of the modern morality tale. In depicting the ordinary with such vigour, she prepares us to confront the extraordinary, the sometimes brutal truths that lurk behind the most homely façade. To do so--and be hilariously funny at the same time--is a rare gift. --Matthew Baylis

Title: Mrs Fyttons Country Life: Description:
Angela Fytton - wonderwife, supermother, bedroom vamp and business partner - has been unceremoniously dumped. Like many a good wife before her she has been swapped by her husband for a younger model. One day, she knows, her husband will return. Meanwhile she yields herself up to the notion that country life is pure and good and that country people are next to angels - but on moving to her country idyll, she discovers this is very far from the truth. From the Author What were my reasons ?What were my reasons for rewriting the classic tale of Woman's Revenge?Oddly enough I didn't think that I had. I wanted to write about a married woman who felt she had put nearly everything into her marriage and was feistily devastated by the terrible shock of losing her husband to another (younger) woman. Angela Fytton wanted her husband back. It was less a revenge and more a strategy to achieve that end. She was wise in a rather baleful way. She knew that new love can be fragile under fire. A lot of women who have been dumped at a certain age say they don't really want revenge (though that, as incidental, must be sweet) they want their man and their marriage back. But all gains are losses (and vice versa)--in order to get her husband back she mus break up another family--a little moral conundrum for her to work out. And all losses are gains--to lose her husband is to gain a freedom (even if she thinks she doesn't want it) and in among the farce and the frolics of what takes place in the country when she moves there is a journey towards wisdom for her too. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Title: The Sex Life Of My Aunt: Description:
Lovely home, lovely husband, lovely family. Apart from the envy of her less contented sister everything in Dilys' rags-to-riches life is lovely, lovely, lovely. Until the day she meets a man at a railway station who is also - lovely. As she hurtles towards either her destruction or her liberation she discovers that deceit is in the blueprint of our birth, that ancient Aunts have their own dark secrets, that envious sisters have their reasons. And that when Brief Encounters meet Basic instincts, the right choice, like truth, is rarely pure and never simple. About the Author Mavis Cheek is the author of Parlour Games, Dog Days, Janice Gentle Gets Sexy, Aunt Margaret's Lover, Sleeping Beauties, Getting Back Brahms, Three Men on a Plane and most recently Mrs Fytton's Country Life. She was born and educated in Wimbledon, and now lives in West London. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.