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Wendy Perriam
&
Second Skin

"To attend a rave at the age of 56 required some courage - especially an underground rave, run by a man in a micro-skirt and parachute boots, known as MC Teabag ... My first instinct was to flee - instead I stayed till almost dawn." Wendy Perriam tells us more about researching her new - and thirteenth - novel, Second Skin.

Wendy Perriam could never be described as conventional! Expelled for heresy from her convent boarding school, she escaped to Oxford University where she read history. From there, after a series of jobs ranging from waitress and barmaid to artist's model and carnation debudder, she embarked on a successful career in advertising, which she combined with writing poetry and short stories. Today she writes full time - and something of her own personal struggle to follow her true career shines through in this, her latest novel, Second Skin.

Her researches for the book took her from the well-ordered safety of suburban Surrey to the glorious squalor of a flat-share in Camden Town, where her twenty-something flatmates whisked her off to clubs, pubs, gigs and, yes, a rave. Catherine Jones, the protagonist of Second Skin, undergoes a similar initiation. Catapulted into a dramatic life-change, Catherine is forced to confront the fact that she has always lived through other people - and in line with other people's expectations. Now, however, she has a second chance.

Through Catherine, and the friends she makes, Wendy Perriam examines with humour and insight the relentless pressures of contemporary society - to be sexy, slim and successful; the perfect parent, yet the single-minded career person. And, as she explains in our interview, sometimes 'having it all' is just not all it's cracked up to be.

The Wendy Perriam Interview
click on the respective question to see the answer

1. Second Skin is your thirteenth novel. Are each of your novels products of your own interests at the time, or do you have ongoing themes or topics that you explore through writing?

2. Tell us a little about the motivation behind Second Skin itself.

3. Is it true that you often put bits of yourself and your own experiences into your characters?

4. Why do you live in suburbia if it’s wrong for you?

5. As part of your research for Second Skin you went to live in a flat-share in Camden Town. How did you find that?

6. You also worked for a short while in Camden Market. How did that experience affect Second Skin?

7. However rewarding the idea of striding out towards one’s own goals must be, surely that first step demands an incredible leap of faith?

8. You've said in a previous interview that you believe human beings need a certain order in their lives. How do we know where to draw the appropriate line between this comforting order and the freedom from duty and routine?

9. "A work in progress" is how Will describes Catherine in Second Skin. Is one always a work in progress throughout one's life, or have you finally discovered who you are and where you're going?

10. The book examines the pressures of contemporary society, and the balance between trivialisation and the darker side of life. You’ve referred in the past to Blake’s ‘joy and woe’. Can you tell us a little more about what this means for you and for Second Skin?

11. And yet there's always humour running through your writing - even the worst situations can give rise to a joke or be turned into something positive.

12. If you were asked to sum up Second Skin for the reader, what would you say, and what do you hope people will take away from it?

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This content originally appeared on the HarperCollins website and is therefore © HarperCollins 1999