Items related to The Sex Life of My Aunt (Thorndike Large Print General...
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.
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Review:
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.
Review:
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
'Cheek is a marvellous writer whose characters are all beautifully drawn, whose observations on the absurd behaviour of the middle-aged invariably hit the mark and who makes you laugh out loud, even as you are wincing with pain.' Daily Mail 'Why Mavis Cheek is not as celebrated as Joanna Trollope or Mary Wesley is a mystery. She's got everything they have, in spades. If anything, she's an improvement on them, in that her sense of humour is wicked and her literary allusions wider.' Observer
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherThorndike Pr
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0786253797
- ISBN 13 9780786253791
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
- Rating
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