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Harnessing Peacocks
by
Mary Wesley
Hebe listens in the darkness of the hall to a family conference. Her stern and hypocritical grandfather has convinced her three prissy sisters and their successful husbands that Hebe's unexpected pregnancy must be terminated. So Hebe flees into the night.
Twelve summers later, she is living happily with her son in a seaside town. She has adapted well, puting her son through
...morePaperback, 279 pages
Published
July 18th 1986
by Black Swan
(first published 1985)
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Can a woman whose family holds a family conference to decide and plan her abortion manage successfully to steal away in the night and run away to make a life for herself and her unborn child? It appears so. Hebe lives in a quiet English village with her son, Silas, and manages by working as a private chef to a few elderly ladies for a few weeks at a time, and a prostitute to select men, a group she calls, her Syndicate. The latter career is of course, not a well known fact, and most of her clien...more
Jan 08, 2010
pinknantucket
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
ms-readathon-2003
I think Mary Wesley is most famous for her book The Camomile Lawn. She is an author that is worth trying out, if you haven’t already. This book is not one of her best – my favourite to date has been The Vacillations of Poppy Carew – but still quite enjoyable. She tends to write about the same sort of characters a lot, and in this book I didn’t find her set of characters as likeable or convincing.
One thing I have liked about Mary Wesley’s books is that her heroines tend to be unconventional, but...more
One thing I have liked about Mary Wesley’s books is that her heroines tend to be unconventional, but...more
Again Mary Wesley took me into a world that I have little or no knowledge of. Hebe the main character is a single mother with a talent for two things cooking and love making. She manages her life just fine with these two talents keeping her life in order, until there is an unexpected upset to the balance. There is so much spirit and love put into Mary Wesley's characters that you actually wish that you could sit down to coffee with them. I will be sure to reread this story again as it was anoth...more
Mar 12, 2013
Chris
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
bedroom-bookcase,
kindle
This is close to being my favourite novel by Wild Mary. It has a tight cast of characters that interact in a series of scenes that are a little like a French farce. Most of the characters are 'nice people' or 'the right sort', and a fair proportion of those are not particularly nice (but they are the right sort). The book was written long after Mary Wesley concluded that she had wasted a lot of time sleeping with Old Etonians, and it reflects her conclusions about that class.
It's a funny book, f...more
It's a funny book, f...more
The main character, Hebe, has found an interesting and unconventional way of supporting her son as he attends an expensive boarding school in England.
She holds her life in tight control but her system becomes unravelled and she has to open up to herself and her son. Some wonderful old characters and some shockers. I enjoyed the book.
She holds her life in tight control but her system becomes unravelled and she has to open up to herself and her son. Some wonderful old characters and some shockers. I enjoyed the book.
I smiled my way through this book enjoying the characters and their predicaments. I knew the story having seen the tv production years ago but I enjoyed the intricacies of the novel more. The intertwining of lives was brilliant.
What a single mother can do only in fiction, but a good read all the same. Funny most of the time and some regrets along the way.
I read this after seeing the TV movie starring Serena Scott Thomas and Peter Davison. The story is a bit improbable but I liked it enough to keep it all these years.
My favorite Mary Wesley novel. Highly recommend.
I just liked the title, so I read it. Thought it was pretty good.
Read this years ago and loved it - just reading it again after finding my old copy at my Grandmother's house.
An easy "Red Hat No Knickers" read, if somewhat dated by now.
Essex Library book sale March 2011
delightfully wicked!
Hebe was a bit of a Mary Sue, but this was a fun quick read.
Hard to know how to rate these Mary Wesley books. I really love them (perhaps some a little more than others), but it's been a long time since I read them, and I don't quite remember which is which.
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Wesley has a gimlet eye that she runs over 'contemporary' romance (bear in mind that this was published while the Cold War still rumbled on) in her customary acerbic fashion. It's pleasant, but at times irritatingly vague -- Jim seems old enough to be Hebe's father, rather than her lover. Still, there are worse ways of passing a Sunday afternoon.
A single mother sends her son to boarding school, and works hard to keep him there. Some lively clashes, a series of coincidences, and a mostly satisfying conclusion. An unfortunate extensive use of bad language spoils an otherwise enjoyable (if unlikely) book.
Very Muriel Spark-ish comedy, only twice as long and without any murders. I spent a lot of the book wishing there would be three fewer principal characters, but by the end I didn't mind so much. Not completely sold on the ending, either...
Cathy's has an older cover than the one shown.
Cathy has read the usual hundred-some-odd books this year. I'm entering them all tonight, but I will try to get some basic remarks from her about them sometime in the next few days.
Cathy has read the usual hundred-some-odd books this year. I'm entering them all tonight, but I will try to get some basic remarks from her about them sometime in the next few days.
Enjoyed the first half - thought the ending was rather annoying.
Was a 'bag book'
Was a 'bag book'
Vintage Wesley
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Mary Wesley, CBE (24 June 1912 – 30 December 2002) was a English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II.[citation needed]During her career, she became one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and...more
More about Mary Wesley...
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and...more
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