Parlour Games (Windsor Selection) - Hardcover

Mavis Cheek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754018865 ISBN 13: 9780754018865

Publisher: Chivers Large print (Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & C, 2003

Synopsis

Celia, housewife, mother and wonderful cook, is celebrating her fortieth birthday. In her smart London home, her major worries are private schooling and the misplaced zeal of Neighbourhood Watch vigilantes. But the house of cards collapses around her, as friends and a sister turn edgy and fickle, a long-time admirer turns into a crude jester, and Celia spies her husband embracing a ghastly woman in a ‘Come Dancing’ frock.

About this title

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

This second novel by the author of Pause Between Acts should be welcomed warmly by readers who devour fiction by satiric writers of the Fay Weldon and Patrick Gale variety. Cheek writes with a particularly brittle and dead-on wit that skewers her subjects, English yuppies who have contrived comfortable lives in the just-right suburb of Bedford Park. Celia and Alex appear to have everything, including two pleasant children, an impeccably tasteful house and elegant dinner parties. But the events surrounding Celia's 40th birthday party lead to chaos and infidelity all around. By the end of the book, life's possibilities have changed completely. Cheek's command of absurd situations and her razor-sharp dialogue is dazzling--this is the stuff of which the finest English screwball comedy films used to be made. Even the minor players, from the nosy, haughty cleaning lady to assorted friends and lovers, are richly drawn and perfectly cast. But, while harking back in spirit to Thorne Smith and E. F. Benson, this novel is also spiced with hilarious and explicit peccadillos, across which a discreet veil used to be drawn.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Chivers Large print (Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & C
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0754018865
• ISBN 13: 9780754018865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416