A   F   T   E   R      P   U   R   P   L   E

"Other girls can type sixty words
a minute. I can come ten
times an hour."

Thus speaks Thea Morton,
a randy, greedy, mixed-up
child-woman who is part
Wife of Bath, part ecstatic
St Teresa, forever hoping
to bump into God.

For Thea, sex and religious
experience are one. "You soar
beyond your own confining
body and hit the electric fence
which runs round heaven."
So when she meets Ray
Murphy, an intense ascetic
Franciscan friar, with red hair
and green socks, she regards him
as the obvious route to the
Godhead. To seduce Ray would be
a miracle, so she pursues him to
Lourdes. There, amidst the
sick and handicapped, she
witnesses not a miracle but a
vision, and is entrusted with
a mission which changes her
whole life. But when she
tries to tell the world she has
seen St Bernadette, she's regarded
as a lunatic - or worse. Purple is
the colour of passion, penance and
panache, and After Purple is a highly
coloured story of sex, religion and
violence, combining outrageous comedy
with an impassioned quest for God.

An extravagant big dipper of a book . . .
displaying a boldness, an exuberance
and sharpness of eye.
Not for the weak of stomach.
The Times

Spectacularly exuberant monologue,
whose heroine lurches crazily from
violent sexual passion to nuns,
priests and saintly vision.
Uninhibited and exceptionally entertaining.
Sunday Times

A deeply serious and moving novel
with strong theological overtones,
it has you alternately cringing,
crying, laughing. A virtuoso performance
from start to finish. The bizarre plot is hilariously funny
Publishers Weekly

It has an astonishing fecundity,
gusto, intelligence. It deserves
to be a big hit.
D.M. Thomas

After Purple is raw gin, by the neck!
This book is to celibacy what
firelighters were to Joan of Arc.
Cosmopolitan