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Pause Between Acts by Mavis Cheek
Joan, a recent divorcee, keeps her life under control through a series of fantastic stories told to her parents and her ex-husband, but her control starts slipping when she is introduced to actor Finbar Flynn
Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Mavis Cheek
32 books50 followersBorn in Wimbledon, now part of London, Mavis left school at 16 to do office work with Editions Alecto, a Kensington publishing company. She later moved to the firm's gallery in Albemarle Street, where she met artists such as David Hockney, Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield and Gillian Ayres. In 1969 she married a "childhood sweetheart", Chris Cheek, a physicist, whom she had met at a meeting of the Young Communist League in New Malden, but they separated three years later. Later she lived for eleven years with the artist Basil Beattie. She returned to education in 1976, doing a two-year arts course at Hillcroft College, a further education college for women.
Although Cheek had planned to take a degree course, she turned instead to fiction writing while her daughter, Bella Beattie, was a child. She moved from London to Aldbourne in the Wiltshire countryside in 2003, but as she explained to a newspaper, "Life in the city was a comparative breeze. Life in the country is tough, a little bit dangerous and not for wimps."
Cheek has been involved with the Marlborough LitFest, and also teaches creative writing. This has included voluntary work at Holloway and Erlstoke prisons. As she described in an article: "What I see [at Erlstoke] is reflected in my own experience. Bright, overlooked, unconfident men who are suddenly given the opportunity to learn grow wings, and dare to fail. It helps to be able to tell them that I, too, was once designated thick by a very silly [education] system. My prisoners have written some brilliant stuff, and perhaps it gives them back some self-esteem."
Although Cheek had planned to take a degree course, she turned instead to fiction writing while her daughter, Bella Beattie, was a child. She moved from London to Aldbourne in the Wiltshire countryside in 2003, but as she explained to a newspaper, "Life in the city was a comparative breeze. Life in the country is tough, a little bit dangerous and not for wimps."
Cheek has been involved with the Marlborough LitFest, and also teaches creative writing. This has included voluntary work at Holloway and Erlstoke prisons. As she described in an article: "What I see [at Erlstoke] is reflected in my own experience. Bright, overlooked, unconfident men who are suddenly given the opportunity to learn grow wings, and dare to fail. It helps to be able to tell them that I, too, was once designated thick by a very silly [education] system. My prisoners have written some brilliant stuff, and perhaps it gives them back some self-esteem."
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 21, 2025
Really CDs 9781408443286
I do so love this much under appreciated author’s books and this was no exception.
I do so love this much under appreciated author’s books and this was no exception.
December 20, 2023
i saw a review that asked why joan felt the need to cut of all contact with all her friends and become a social recluse all because she got divorced. well … i’m not even divorced and i feel the intense and incessant need to do just that daily. power to joan.
February 26, 2020
This was a curious little pot-boiler, not fitting the usual pattern of the romantic comedy yet not quite providing anything very satisfying in its place. It's pleasantly conversational and the newly divorced narrator, Joan, makes some entertaining observations. However, she is very passive and tends to rake over very tiny incidents, very mildly funny at best, in exhaustive and dull detail. Unusually, hers is the story of craved solitude interrupted, even after she meets a famous actor she finds attractive.
There isn't much sense of a reality outside Joan's head; the world beyond the garden is barely described, so there are wasted opportunities to use locations such as London and Edinburgh for vivid reader experiences. It's all a bit of a blurry rant. At one point, Joan agrees to take a trip to Venice - only to cancel. This is a triumph of style over substance; it's readable but doesn't add up to much.
There isn't much sense of a reality outside Joan's head; the world beyond the garden is barely described, so there are wasted opportunities to use locations such as London and Edinburgh for vivid reader experiences. It's all a bit of a blurry rant. At one point, Joan agrees to take a trip to Venice - only to cancel. This is a triumph of style over substance; it's readable but doesn't add up to much.
February 2, 2023
I discovered Mavis Cheek, an author with a Dorothy Parker-ish wit, in the summer of 1990 on a vacation to the White Mountains of Arizona, and have since been grateful to her for the hours of wit and humor she has gifted me. I have re-read my favorites of hers so many times that I almost know them by heart, but that does not diminish the pleasure I get from them. They are staples in my library along with the likes of Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse. Go-tos whenever a laugh is a necessity, or even just because the mood strikes.
This book, yet another of Mavis Cheek’s novels that is centered around a cheating husband and / or divorce, tells the story of Joan, a woman who is dumped by a husband with a wandering eye, thus giving her to retreat (as much as life allows) to the sanctuary of her domain. Unfortunately, her withdrawal broadened even to the extent of procrastinating the informing of her parents of this crucial, recent development, which, of course, leads to curious misunderstandings, as lies and half-truths usually do in novels.
Mavis Cheek, to her enviable credit, parlayed one divorce into numerous, whimsical novels, at least one of which won awards.
By far, not all of the humor in this one is of the comedy-of-manners type (Jack’s pretense of being one of the Suffolk Battrams in response to the pompous Reginald and Maud’s interrogation), or the obvious, slapstick type (the hilarious scene at the Aldwich), or the ironic humor which resulted when Robyn’s copy of the D.H. Lawrence suffered beneath the heel of Joan’s errant husband. There is also humor that is quite understated and between the lines, such as when Jack confronts Joan saying he now wants his half of their house back because he has left Lizzy (subtext: Jack is currently suffering the same pangs of conscience over Lizzy that he had previously suffered over Joan when he had broken up with her, and, out of guilt, given her their jointly-owned home). Quite a guy. He breaks your heart, but gives you a house - until he has moved on to his next lover/victim, then attempts to renege on the deal and take it back in order to salve his current contrition.
Cheek’s wit spits and rotisseries modern life and relationships until, by the end of the book, I want to deliver a bouquet to her, upon the stage, in consideration of Pause Between Acts, for her ability to metamorphose tragedy into comedy, and her delightful rendering of it all. As Byron said, “From the dull palace to the dirty hovel: Some play the devil, and then write a novel.”
This book, yet another of Mavis Cheek’s novels that is centered around a cheating husband and / or divorce, tells the story of Joan, a woman who is dumped by a husband with a wandering eye, thus giving her to retreat (as much as life allows) to the sanctuary of her domain. Unfortunately, her withdrawal broadened even to the extent of procrastinating the informing of her parents of this crucial, recent development, which, of course, leads to curious misunderstandings, as lies and half-truths usually do in novels.
Mavis Cheek, to her enviable credit, parlayed one divorce into numerous, whimsical novels, at least one of which won awards.
By far, not all of the humor in this one is of the comedy-of-manners type (Jack’s pretense of being one of the Suffolk Battrams in response to the pompous Reginald and Maud’s interrogation), or the obvious, slapstick type (the hilarious scene at the Aldwich), or the ironic humor which resulted when Robyn’s copy of the D.H. Lawrence suffered beneath the heel of Joan’s errant husband. There is also humor that is quite understated and between the lines, such as when Jack confronts Joan saying he now wants his half of their house back because he has left Lizzy (subtext: Jack is currently suffering the same pangs of conscience over Lizzy that he had previously suffered over Joan when he had broken up with her, and, out of guilt, given her their jointly-owned home). Quite a guy. He breaks your heart, but gives you a house - until he has moved on to his next lover/victim, then attempts to renege on the deal and take it back in order to salve his current contrition.
Cheek’s wit spits and rotisseries modern life and relationships until, by the end of the book, I want to deliver a bouquet to her, upon the stage, in consideration of Pause Between Acts, for her ability to metamorphose tragedy into comedy, and her delightful rendering of it all. As Byron said, “From the dull palace to the dirty hovel: Some play the devil, and then write a novel.”
September 12, 2023
Enjoyable
A very funny book, well written and I loved colourful the characters. Weird at the end tho and I didn’t “get it”.
A very funny book, well written and I loved colourful the characters. Weird at the end tho and I didn’t “get it”.
July 2, 2020
the narrator of this story is a schoolteacher whose husband leaves her for another woman. She cuts herself off from family and friends and lives a solitary life,until she has an encounter with a friend of her next door neighbours, a glamorous actor called Finbar Flynn, after which she begins to take an interest in life again.
I found the first half of this book a bit of a bore, I found it hard to sympathise with the narrator's icy detachment from everyone, couldn't really understand why being dumped by your husband should make you want to reject everybody else. ANd there are some very long tedious passages where she is rambling on about things that are not really to do with the story at all. However, once Finbar Flynn arrives it begins to perk up, he is an attractive character,and with him a bit of cheer creeps into the book. however, what comes as a surprise to the heroine didn't surprise me at all, and I wondered why she hadn't noticed long before she did. Mavis Cheek has apparently been compared to Barbara Pym, but I am not sure why, the book has it's moments but is nothing like as good as Pym.
I found the first half of this book a bit of a bore, I found it hard to sympathise with the narrator's icy detachment from everyone, couldn't really understand why being dumped by your husband should make you want to reject everybody else. ANd there are some very long tedious passages where she is rambling on about things that are not really to do with the story at all. However, once Finbar Flynn arrives it begins to perk up, he is an attractive character,and with him a bit of cheer creeps into the book. however, what comes as a surprise to the heroine didn't surprise me at all, and I wondered why she hadn't noticed long before she did. Mavis Cheek has apparently been compared to Barbara Pym, but I am not sure why, the book has it's moments but is nothing like as good as Pym.
May 20, 2009
well i liked it, but it wasn't my best read ever
excerpt from amazon:
Abandoned by her husband, Joan becomes a recluse, shunning her kind neighbors, refusing to take part in the activities of the school where she works and spurning the advances of Robin, a particularly toothsome gym teacher. Nothing avails until an actor named Finbar Flynn escapes from a New Year's Eve party next door and descends upon her. Joan, swilling vodka, decked in her wedding gown, chrysanthemums sprouting from her hair, takes one look and loses her heart. Finbar responds, but not carnally, and although he sends flowers with a note praising her charming eccentricity, he slips mysteriously away. But they meet by chance when she goes to the theater with Robin, an encounter that twists the plot and sets it on a rollicking, unexpected path to denouement.
excerpt from amazon:
Abandoned by her husband, Joan becomes a recluse, shunning her kind neighbors, refusing to take part in the activities of the school where she works and spurning the advances of Robin, a particularly toothsome gym teacher. Nothing avails until an actor named Finbar Flynn escapes from a New Year's Eve party next door and descends upon her. Joan, swilling vodka, decked in her wedding gown, chrysanthemums sprouting from her hair, takes one look and loses her heart. Finbar responds, but not carnally, and although he sends flowers with a note praising her charming eccentricity, he slips mysteriously away. But they meet by chance when she goes to the theater with Robin, an encounter that twists the plot and sets it on a rollicking, unexpected path to denouement.
May 1, 2015
Thank you Mavis Cheek. I thought I'd read all of your novels and then tripped over Pause Between Acts. Read it while suffering from a sinus infection. What a tonic. Loved every word for the personal journey. The ending was predictable but satisfactory and worth waiting for. It was all about Joan and so it should be.
Read
June 23, 2009My introduction to Mavis Cheek - love it.
September 1, 2012
Didn't finish
March 30, 2016
Made me laugh out loud.
January 27, 2008
A fun read.
March 30, 2017
This romance book is ok-ish. Not recommended. The names of the characters are a bit old fashioned even though they are not old. The second half of the book is better but it is a bit weird to be honest.
June 18, 2018
Read this, and several others by Mavis Cheek, decades ago. Re-read in the hope it was disappointing enough to be put out to charity. It wasn't. and although a bit dated (inevitable) and I could remember the ending (a rare occurrence) I enjoyed the writing of it much more than anticipated. Back on the shelf it went.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews