Pause Between Acts
By (Author) Mavis Cheek
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
1st July 2005
Main
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.914
Paperback
272
Width 127mm, Height 197mm, Spine 17mm
200g
Joan's answer to life after divorce from Jack is simple: happy seclusion. She rejects the outside world and embarks on a contented existence of isolated self-indulgence. But when her nice neighbours Fred and Geraldine introduce her to the roguishly desirable actor Finbar Flynn the walls of the citadel begin to crack . . .
"'Makes you laugh out loud, even as you are wincing in pain.' Daily Mail; 'Like Joanna Trollope, she combines a sharp eye for the foibles of human nature with a generous amount of sympathy for her characters.' The Times"
Mavis Cheek was born and grew up in Wimbledon. She failed her eleven plus (twice!) and was put in the B stream of a secondary modern school, where she tried, completely unsuccessfully, to learn to become a good and dutiful secretary. Instead, she left school at sixteen with no qualifications and immediately began working for Editions Alecto, the contemporary art publishers, where she worked with British and American artists such as David Hockney, Allen Jones, Bridget Riley, Patrick Caulfield and George Segal and was part of the team running Alecto's gallery in Albemarle Street, at the heart of the London art market. After twelve happy years at Editions Alecto, she left to go to Hillcroft College for Women from where she graduated in Arts with distinction. She then had her daughter, Bella, and began her writing career in earnest, being blessed in this by her complete lack of qualifications to do anything else. Journalism and travel writing were her first successes.