Pause Between Acts - Softcover

Mavis Cheek

3.57

138 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571225357 ISBN 13: 9780571225354

Publisher: Publisher Details Unknown, 2005

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A portrayal of a divorcee's choice to live alone in happy seclusion which verges on the unreal when she fabricates friendships to protect herself. A chance meeting throws her into the confusion of a sexual comedy of errors which is far removed from the existence she envisaged.

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About the Author:

Mavis Cheek was born and grew up in Wimbledon. She began her working life at Editions Alecto, the contemporary art publishers. After Alecto, she attended Hillcroft College for Women from where she graduated in Arts. After her daughter Bella was born, she began her writing career in earnest; journalism and travel writing at first, then short stories, and eventually, in 1988, her novel Pause Between Acts was published by Bodley Head and won the She/John Menzies First Novel Prize. She is the author of thirteen novels novels including Mrs Fytton's Country Life, Janice Gentle Gets Sexy and, most recently, Amenable Women which was described in The Times as 'a brilliantly funny, warm, intelligent read'. She now lives and writes in the heart of the English countryside..

From Publishers Weekly:

So breezy and accomplished is this debut that it's easy to overlook the slight plot and the hard-to-swallow goings-on narrated by Londoner Joan. Abandoned by her husband, Joan becomes a recluse, shunning her kind neighbors, refusing to take part in the activities of the school where she works and spurning the advances of Robin, a particularly toothsome gym teacher. Nothing avails until an actor named Finbar Flynn escapes from a New Year's Eve party next door and descends upon her. Joan, swilling vodka, decked in her wedding gown, chrysanthemums sprouting from her hair, takes one look and loses her heart. Finbar responds, but not carnally, and although he sends flowers with a note praising her charming eccentricity, he slips mysteriously away. But they meet by chance when she goes to the theater with Robin, an encounter that twists the plot and sets it on a rollicking, unexpected path to denouement. Although the effort to be funny is sometimes apparent, there's a lot of hilarity in a book that makes no pretense of building character or uttering solemnities but proposes, simply, to amuse.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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