Items related to Lying
Synopsis
Lying takes a sharp look at our whole culture of mendacity, in which hype and spin rule supreme, statistics are manipulated, history rewritten, hoaxes abound on the internet, bogus guests appear on TV chat shows, and the travel, beauty and health industries peddle expensive dreams. Lying is also a love story. 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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short-story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column. Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’
From Publishers Weekly
When 20-year-old Alison Ward lurches out of a packed London rush-hour train with the wrong briefcase, she has no idea that exchanging it for her own will initiate an astonishing journey of religious, sexual and emotional discovery. The prolific Perriam (Devils, for a Change; Born of Woman), who, the publisher says, was expelled from her convent boarding-school for heresy, packs her latest romantic thriller with surprisingly complex characters. Allison has never been a churchgoer, but when she returns the devout James Egerton's briefcase, she is instantly smitten and eagerly becomes a convert to Catholicism. Their happy marriage is marred by Alison's failure to conceive the child they both want so desperately. The Church prohibits in vitro fertilization, and Alison, in despair, loses her newfound faith and begins going through the motions of piety, terrified that the admission of her lapse will destroy her husband's affection for her. Then, she finds herself in an adulterous relationship with a young writer, which compounds her shame. When James, the model of rectitude, also shows mysterious but unmistakable signs of a guilty conscience, the domestic drama becomes explosive. Perriam's novel is as much a revelation of the broad spectrum of Christian belief as it is a candid exploration of the resilience of the marital bond when threatened by deceit. Perriam is not as well-known in this country as similar writer Joanna Trollope, and most of her previous books are out of print, but this provocative story of modern mendacity deserves a second look. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCB Creative Books
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 1782923489
- ISBN 13 9781782923480
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages376
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want
