BROKEN PLACES,
Wendy Perriam’s first novel in 8 years,
will be published on 31 August by
Robert Hale.
You may love Eric - or want to shake him! Passionately idealistic about his work as a librarian, and his mission to extend literacy and literature into the wider community, 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 (chocolates provided, but is he a hard nut or a melting cream?); running Wandsworth Prison readers’ groups; attending an American Church that champions the Gospel of Prosperity, or rescuing his daughter from near-rape - he finally comes to epitomize the truth of Hemingway’s words: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
Perriam’s 22nd publication - and first novel in eight years - combines laugh-out-loud comedy with a probing investigation of fear; recognized by doctors and philosophers, as far back as Hippocrates, as one of the most fundamental of human emotions, yet frequently kept hidden, as a source of deepest shame. The novel also explores the often shocking world of children growing up in care. On account of their bad start in life, the future for many is prison, prostitution, the doss-house or drug-addiction. Yet, while Perriam questions the whole basis of our justice system, she also provides a highly entertaining read.
Critical acclaim for Wendy Perriam
Perriam is one of the funniest writers around.
Daily Telegraph
Perriam is a real find - she has that magical combination of a brisk, lively style and a literate intelligence.
Sunday Express
Perriam is a writer of authority and skill, with a wicked ear for conversational quirks.
Sunday Times
She has a considerable command of her craft and a shrewd sense of those aspects of contemporary life which are worth recording.
Times Literary Supplement
Perriam’s shrewd, sharp prose style is complemented by a marvellous talent for satirical observation.
The Scotsman
Perriam is the writer who makes purple prose a term of approval. Nobody does deep feelings better.
Sunday Times
Perriam’s strength is emotional accuracy. She draws convincing characters and poignant situations, and the reader can’t help but be emotionally involved.
The Spectator
Perriam must be one of the most underrated writers in the country. But in an oeuvre of nearly 20 books, she has proved a consistently sharp chronicler of modern Britain. She is also an extremely entertaining storyteller.
Sunday Telegraph
Perriam makes waves with her novels because each of them is an unusually honest projection of her personality and each is sustained by a fine command of her craft.
Glasgow Herald
Perriam is sometimes very funny, sometimes very sexual, sometimes very painful, and always difficult to pin down.
Standard
Literary, funny, moving - in a word, wonderful.
Daily Mail
I am her greatest fan.
Fay Weldon
Wendy Perriam talks about "Broken Places"
"One of the questions I pose in “Broken Places” is whether too much loss and trauma, especially at an early age, will always result in fear. My protagonist, Eric, has suffered many losses and much disruption growing up as child in care. Because he was sexually abused and had no power or control, he gradually lost trust in adults and in life, and becomes highly fearful once grown-up himself.
Those not afflicted by either fear or depression may condemn such states as ‘weakness’. However, recent neurological research reveals that constant, chronic adversity in childhood can hinder certain areas of crucial brain-development. That itself can give rise to fear and to other problems, physiologically caused. And even those with normal brain development may fall apart if they suffer too much stress. In fact, I’ve always believed that there’s only a thin line between so-called normal people and vulnerable groups, such as the homeless or the mentally ill, drug-addicts and prisoners and the like. Safe, successful lives can crumble overnight, if the pressures prove too great. The man selling doughnuts in Camden market may once have been a high-powered CEO; the down-and-out, sleeping rough on cardboard, could have lost his home following a harsh divorce; the woman staring at the wall in a psychiatric hospital might once have been a Head Mistress or a barrister.
Despite such serious themes, I wrote the book as a comedy. Fear itself has many humorous aspects - though admittedly not for the sufferers! Eric’s fear of flying drives him to farcical lengths, when, for the first time in his 44 years, he’s forced to board a plane. He’s convinced that the woman sitting next to him - a devout Muslim in a niquab - is actually a terrorist in disguise. And he refuses to budge from his cramped, confining seat, for fear that if he walks around the plane, it might overbalance and cause a fatal crash.
In many of my previous novels, I’ve also combined comedy with challenging subject matter; not just to sugar the pill, but because humour itself is a fascinating subject. It’s been used since time immemorial to counter all the threats to our existence: illness, natural disasters, emotional catastrophes and, ultimately, death itself.
Given such grave threats, is it any wonder that fear is so widespread and such a fundamental force in human affairs? As far back as the fourth century BC, Hippocrates recognised it as one of the most common human emotions, and Avicenna, the Arabian physician and philosopher, born around 980AD, emphasised “the great fear of things that aren’t frightening”, which he had often observed in his patients. Yet fear is frequently hidden, as a source of shame and embarrassment, and certainly Eric tries to conceal his terrors, to fit the macho image required of modern man. But, of course, any author interested in people’s inner lives will find such ‘secrets’ intriguing.
“Broken Places” is written through the voice of a man - a difficult challenge for a female. Of course, both sexes have far more in common than the comparatively minor things that divide them, and Jung’s exploration of the ‘animus’ and ‘anima’ famously emphasized the ‘opposites’ within both men and women. I’m certainly aware of my own male shadow-self. As a child, I longed to be a boy and always played the male parts in childhood games. The female role-models offered to me in the male-dominated1950s seemed constricting in the extreme: the submissive, docile Blessed Virgin Mary; the pretty but passive, powerless wife and mother. Even now, I dislike many of the things associated with femininity - shopping, fashion, make-up, high heels, home-making. And I feel a deep sympathy for men, who, regardless of the circumstances, are expected to be strong, powerful and fearless. A woman may flee from a spider or scream at a mouse, but a man who does likewise will be laughed to scorn.
I made Eric a librarian, partly because the Public Library was his sole refuge in his childhood - a place of order, peace and intellectual stimulation, and thus a welcome contrast to the mindless chaos of the children’s home. Reading allows him to escape into other, better worlds; the realm of the imagination countering grim reality. And an altruistic librarian in the Children’s Library acts as his guide and mentor; providing him with much-needed standards and structure.
I’ve always been a fan of libraries but, until I wrote “Broken Places”, I was unaware of the wealth of different projects they promote; some deliberately directed at non-readers. One of the more intriguing of these is “Living Libraries”; recently set up in a few test-areas, whereby you borrow people instead of books. You might “take out” an asylum seeker, or a disabled, Asian, lesbian single parent, to break down barriers and prejudice, and teach you more about the real lives of such people. Although “Living Libraries” don’t actually feature in the novel, the idea behind them is central to Eric’s thinking. One of his ideals is to increase tolerance and empathy through the community schemes he initiates; believing, as he does, that we should all try to gain a deeper knowledge of the “strangers” in our midst.
And this, I feel, is his saving grace. He may upbraid himself as lily-livered, but, given his unlucky start and the harshness of his childhood, I hope my readers will see him as a lion-heart."