Wendy Perriam - On Everything

W E N D Y P E R R I A M O N L I F E , D E A T H ,

T H E U N I V E R S E A N D E V E R Y T H I N G

O n L o v e

I rarely write about love in the romantic sense, but more as an obsession, something close to madness. Sometimes love has more to do with egoism, masochism and delusion than with moonlight and roses.

O n M a r r i a g e

Never before in history have couples attempted such togetherness. Separate spheres and separate interests were once the (saving?) norm. Perhaps we need to be more flexible - create new ways of being separate-yet-together, or even consider bigamy, polygamy, or some variation on harems.

O n D i v o r c e

A word we use so lightly, which involves the ultimate in loss - loss of partner and companionship; of sex, and sometimes children; of house and/or income; of self-esteem and confidence; of security and territory, of safety, habit, hope. My own divorce was a terrible ordeal, like giving up my religion again.

O n F e m i n i s m

I'm suspicious of all "isms", since they tend to be divisive. As a writer, one has to be both male and female, and not to see an enemy where there is only a Y-chromosome. As Simone de Beauvoir said: "No one is born a woman" - nor a man, either. The pain and injustice of being sick, starving, handicapped, seem to me to far outweigh the inequalities of gender.

Wendy Perriam's novels have earned her plaudits because her uninhibited voice is loud with educated perceptions on women's ongoing guilt and confusion; the contradictory pull between faithfully nurturing domestic serenity and wanton fantasy fulfilled.

(Company)

O n S e x

Sex is a highly serious matter - the nearest we get to breaking out of the prison of our self, or out of the confines of our body - yet our society seems to be turning it into a variation on aerobics: a healthy form of recreation, with all the stress on position and performance. The language of the sex-manuals is joky and facetious. Are we frightened of the sheer power of sex, so that we dress it up in Ann Summers naughty nighties, rather than letting it strip us bare?

It's impossible to categorise this prolific novelist, whose work is a bizarre mix of intellectual gravitas and sex scenes more steamy than any you'd find in a bonkbuster.

(Daily Mail)

Perriam has no qualms about blasphemy in her determined battle to wipe out repression. Her sex scenes are more than explicit, they are pure, raw raunch; horizontal dirty dancing that leaves little to the imagination. That the frenzied sexual activities in a Perriam novel range from masturbation with religious artefacts to loveless copulation in holy surroundings reveals not only the author's enveloping preoccupation with the sacred and profane, but also her desire to shock her former brethren out of their cosy complacency. This she achieves with a style that is as exuberant as it is defiant, encompassing in equal measure both the erotic and the familial aspects of modern human relationships. For Perriam's books are not mere "cliterature". Setting aside doubting nuns, frustrated housewives and randy mental patients on the loose, the main thrust of her work is concerned with freedom - both from the restrictions induced by Catholic guilt and those enforced by the confines of society.

(Time Out)

O n w r i t i n g
a b o u t S e x

Sex-scenes are difficult. One has to tread a tightrope between the crude and the coy, and there really is no appropriate vocabulary - the words are either too clinical or too vulgar. Describing an orgasm (or a mystical experience for that matter) brings the writer up against the same basic problem: the inadequacy of language. Yet if we avoid the issue by closing the bedroom door, then we're ignoring one of the most intimate and meaningful areas of human existence. Perhaps we need more words for sex, like the Eskimos who have dozens for snow to denote its subtle gradations from flake to blizzard to slush.

O n P s y c h o -
a n a l y s i s

Should it carry a health-warning? It can certainly be dangerous - to one's virtue as well as one's psyche. I belong to a support-group for those who've had sex with their psychiatrists, and the stories are alarming. Yet analysis deepens one's understanding and can also deepen one's writing. My first novel focused on psychiatry and my 12th featured a psychotherapist becoming gradually disillusioned with her profession. In Fifty-Minute Hour I satirised both analysis and sex therapy, and asked myself these questions:

• Is psychoanalysis the greatest revolution since Copernicus and Darwin, as Freud himself claimed, or an unproven, dangerous and even sadistic form of treatment which often causes more problems than it solves?

• Is there a danger of becoming seriously addicted to one's therapist, despite the fact that even an untrained con-man can set himself up in practice?

• To what extent is a therapist playing the role of God - providing structure and permanence in our fragmented society where traditional religion has lost much of its relevance and power?

• Is the analytic situation fraught with strong sexual overtones, both real and imaginary? What can be done to prevent the abuses that occur – abuses often hushed up by guilty analysts and confused and powerless patients?

O n R e l i g i o n

I have a huge God-shaped hole in my life, but faith is like love - you can't buy it on mail-order. I do believe in prayer, though, if only as a powerful force like electricity or microwaves - one we don't yet comprehend. Medieval man accepted spiritual forces, but we tend to ignore them. Many of us are out of touch with the whole sphere of the miraculous and the transcendent; that realm of soul, spirit, mystery, which gave our ancestors a fuller and richer life.

Perriam's talent has its spring in spirituality rather than in the earthy depths her characters explore.

(Books and Bookmen)

Like an avenging angel, she consistently mocks the very foundations of the Church as though daring the deity to condemn her to everlasting damnation.

(Time Out)

O n D e a t h

The new taboo subject, as sex used to be. Yet at least we have dissociated death from damnation. The prospect of eternal hellfire must have haunted countless generations - and still haunts me. Several years ago I had a near-death experience and found myself praying in a state of terrified panic as I battled with a swarm of devils trying to drag me down to hell.

True to my convent training I reflect constantly on death. We were taught at school to be ready to meet Our Saviour at any hour of the day or night, and even now I never go to bed without a ripple of fear at the prospect of the Great Unknown beyond the grave.