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Absinthe For Elevenses
In this sparkling and ironical study of the complexities of love, Ginny Barnes is wrenched out of her suburban cul-de-sac into a brutal five-star passion and forced to choose between her decaffeinated, low-cholesterol husband Ian and her high-calorie lover Caldos de Roche, a gourmet psychoanalyst who seeks fame and fortune by selling Happiness like hamburgers.
De Roche is aiming to transform not only what he sees as his impotent profession, but also once-a-Catholic Ginny, still tied to home and children, and obsessed with guilt and sin. Far from impotent himself, he woos her with heavenly pleasures, combining sacred and profane, making highly unconventional love to a background of church music, and trying to coax a dazzling social butterfly from a drab and cosy chrysalis. The new glossy, gift-wrapped Ginny, torn between the risk of eternal damnation by a God she only half believes in and the god she sees in Caldos himself, discovers that even heaven-on-earth can be hell . . .
‘Sexy, funny . . . most accomplished’ Now
‘A quite exceptional first novel . . . a tour de force . . . beautifully handled . . . I predict a glittering future for its author’ Scotsman
‘One of those outrageous books which compel you to read on’ She
De Roche is aiming to transform not only what he sees as his impotent profession, but also once-a-Catholic Ginny, still tied to home and children, and obsessed with guilt and sin. Far from impotent himself, he woos her with heavenly pleasures, combining sacred and profane, making highly unconventional love to a background of church music, and trying to coax a dazzling social butterfly from a drab and cosy chrysalis. The new glossy, gift-wrapped Ginny, torn between the risk of eternal damnation by a God she only half believes in and the god she sees in Caldos himself, discovers that even heaven-on-earth can be hell . . .
‘Sexy, funny . . . most accomplished’ Now
‘A quite exceptional first novel . . . a tour de force . . . beautifully handled . . . I predict a glittering future for its author’ Scotsman
‘One of those outrageous books which compel you to read on’ She
363 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1980
11 people want to read
About the author
Wendy Perriam
53 books11 followersWendy 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.’
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.’
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