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

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