Search results for ""author penelope mortimer""

'Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater Had a wife and couldn't keep her...'In this extraordinary, semi-autobiographical novel, Penelope Mortimer depicts a married woman's breakdown in 1960s London. With three husbands in her past, one in her present and a numberless army of children, Mrs Armitage is astonished to find herself collapsing one day in Harrods. Strange, unsettling and shot through with black comedy, this is a moving account of one woman's realisation that marriage and family life may not, after all, offer all the answers to the problems of living.

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... marvellous skill - a writer who can knock spots off most of her contemporaries. - The Guardian A tragi-comedy published in 1971 that looks at the experience of a woman escaping a broken marriage and trying to make a new home for grown-up children who no longer need her. Dealing with themes of abandonment, loneliness, liberation and love, Eleanor's emotional journey is often raw and dark, but at times funny and uplifting as she grapples with her newfound singledom under the critical eyes of her mother and mother-in-law, and the selfish attitudes of various suitors. Perfectly capturing the tone of the 70s, and the reality faced by so many women when forced to re-assess their roles as wife and mother.

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