wendy perriam - new titles 2012
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Two new heartbreakingly hilarious publications
from Wendy Perriam
‘I’m on the train!’ Broken Places Now in paperback, Wendy Perriam’s sixteenth novel tells the
tempestuous story of Eric Parkhill, a modern-day foundling, given
his name by the park-keeper who found him. Starting in a mess, he
finally reveals his inner strengths and even becomes an unlikely hero
to his estranged and wayward daughter.
You may love Eric – or want to shake him! Passionately idealistic
about his work as a librarian, he’s also ruefully aware that he’s not
exactly Superman. Forced to hide his mysterious background and his
mortifying fears, he’s a man with secrets – withheld even from close
friends. His once homely wife, now a fashionista, has abandoned
him, to live in Seattle with a high-powered corporate kingpin, taking
their only child, a moody minx-in-waiting, about to turn thirteen.
Yet, against the odds, Eric sets out to prove himself – indeed,
even to find a soul-mate. Whether braving ‘Choco-Love’ Speed-
Dating; running Wandsworth Prison readers’ groups; attending
an American Church that champions the Gospel of Prosperity,
or rescuing his daughter from near-rape – he eventually comes to
epitomize the truth of Hemingway’s words: The world breaks everyone and, afterward, many are strong at the broken places.
Who hasn’t winced as some phone-pest embarks on a maddeningly
public conversation? But, in Perriam’s title-story, the timidly
conformist Stephen does rather more than wince. Overcoming a
lifetime of restraint, he leaps to his feet on a crowded commuter-
train and throttles the offender.
Or does he? The hair’s-breadth line between reality and flights of
fancy is a feature of these stories – as in much of Perriam’s work –
the power of the imagination providing a highly effective antidote
to grief, loss or frustration. Whether it’s Carole, the office dogsbody,
finding self-esteem and status through her congress with an
Archangel, or Connie, an octogenarian spinster, reliving her aborted
wedding day by passionately kissing the visiting plumber, Perriam’s
characters transform their lives in unexpected ways.
Yet, amidst such shocks and surprises are quieter moments of
grace: true heavenly grace descending on an atheist in Westminster
Cathedral; grace granted to a grieving daughter at a distinctly
offbeat funeral; grace surprising an eighteen-year-old, who, after
years of rebellion against her parents, is forced to recognize the
blessings and securities of home.
Shortlisted for the MIND Book of the Year, Broken Places combines laugh-out-loud comedy with an examination of fear: the most common – and most
frequently concealed – of all our human emotions.
‘I’m on the train!’ brilliantly chronicles the dramasand dilemmas inherent in our human condition, in
another outstanding collection from one of Britain’s leading short-story writers.
Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. She now divides her time between teaching and writing.
Her 16 novels and 7 short-story collections boldly mix sex, religion and humour, and have been acclaimed for their psychological insight and their power to disturb, divert and shock.
Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood – have shaped 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’.
Wendy Perriam
Herald Tribune
Sunday Times
Sunday Telegraph
Time Out
Fay Weldon
For more information about Wendy and her books, please visit:
www.wendyperriam.com
Special OfferOn bOth bOOkS!Buy at a 35% discount
for the first month of publicationwhen you order from our website
www.halebooks.com Published 30 April 2012
Both titles also available as ebooksfrom 31 August 2012
978-0-7090-9625-2978-0-7090-9135-6
£8.99Paperback
£19.99Hardback
Ordering infOrmatiOn
For orders, please contact Combined Book Services on:01892 837171
Combined Book ServicesUnit D, Paddock Wood Distribution Centre
Paddock WoodTonbridge TN12 6UU
ROBERT HALE LTDPublishers since 1936
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