Parlour Games - Softcover

Cheek, Mavis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911295721 ISBN 13: 9781911295723

Publisher: Ipso Books, 2017

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's novels include Janice Gentle Gets Sexy, Aunt Margaret's Lover, Sleeping Beauties, Getting Back Brahms, Three Men on a Plane, Mrs Fytton's Country Life and The Sex Life of My Aunt.

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: Ipso Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1911295721
• ISBN 13: 9781911295723
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334