Second Skin

by Wendy Perriam

"It seems crazy that in all that time I never stopped to think what I was actually cut out to do or be. But I'm sure I'm not unusual. There must be hundreds of people stuck in jobs they hate, or married to the wrong partner, or trying to be someone they're not. It's such an awful waste." Catherine Jones – conscientious working wife and mother - is catapulted into a dramatic life-change. As the shock waves subside, she realises that she's never had the chance to be her true self, never even considered who that self might be. Over the years she has become her own gaoler, someone merely waiting to live. Peeling off her "second skin" of duty, guilt and fear, she starts living with a vengeance. She joins a bohemian flat-share in Camden Town, with people little older than her own children. She takes a job in Camden market - a startling contrast to suburbia. She meets a poet, Will, and embarks on her first ever affair. But her heady new existence is threatened by her family's demands, even, paradoxically, by Will himself. At this turning point in her life, will she succeed in her bid for freedom and become the person she was born to be?

542 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 1998

About the author

Wendy 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.’

Reviews

[Charlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 2.5 this book was mildly eventful and became too slow for me to read. I put it down several times and eventually it just became too hard to pick up.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Skin is the story of Catherine who was married young, had her children young, and was widowed young at the age of 42. She takes stock of her life and realising that she has spent it going from being someone's daughter, to someone's wife, to someone's mother, to someone's widow and decides it is time to be herself. She sets off to do this, complete with a new image, new home, new friends, new love and new job. She embraces a new carefree lifestyle and starts enjoying herself, but the problems start when she suddenly finds herself being pulled back to her old life by a sense of duty and guilt.

It is a book that most people, especially women, can identify with - there are women facing dilemmas that are familiar to many of us, including the high flying career woman who is torn between her job and doing something she loves and the working mother struggling to combine her job with her family and be superwoman.

A lot of the book is set in Camden Town and Market - a place I love, and it was so easy to visualise each scene and the writing really brings the area and the whole vibe of the place to life.

I have only one gripe about the book - there were times when Catherine did seem to come over a bit "too good to be true". She seemed to be immediately accepted and "welcomed into the fold" and universally loved (with one exception)by everyone she met just a little too easily for my liking; it just didn't quite ring 100% true.

That having been said, it was a very good read and I really enjoyed it.

[Chloé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably only a 3.5 but a good 3.5. The writing's great, the characters are well developed, it's a really enjoyable book... but ultimately I just didn't buy it. It's too extreme. People just don't ditch their families (during times of illness and pregnancy no less!), change their entire lifestyle and the way the view the world. For me the unrealistic development of the story ruined it.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit unbelievable but still a good read.