Mary Wesley Omnibus: Jumping the Queue / The Camomile Lawn / Harnessing Peacocks

by Mary Wesley

Three touching contemporary British novels of love, loss, and humor from the international bestselling "virtuoso" ( The Times , London).Jumping the Queue : This masterpiece of wit, humor, and psychological suspense tells the story of a middle-aged widow who has had it with life. She puts her papers in order, gives away her pet goose, packs a picnic lunch, and heads to the beach to drown herself--only to meet a criminal on the run who has the same idea. Together they set out on adventure in this novel about the hidden costs of love and death.The Camomile Lawn : In this international bestseller, several cousins reunite after forty years to lay one of their own to rest. Together they recall their last carefree summer--and one hot August night in 1939 before the war began. They also reflect on the chaos that followed . . . and how it changed their lives forever.Harnessing Peacocks : Single mother Hebe juggles numerous lovers while working as a manor house chef to pay for her son's schooling. When her two worlds collide, a secret from the past leads to a final showdown with a man who's in search for his lost love in this captivating and sensual novel.

688 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 1992

About the author

Mary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II. 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 Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.

From Mary Wesley

Reviews

[Jane Naylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Wesley writes with a fairly naive style, she creates some interesting plots with unusual characters but they are all very readable

[Robyn Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to decide if Mary Wesley was just trying to shock people by using the F word in her first novel for adults, or she just thought to hell with it, I'm 70 now, I can do what I like.
Be that as it may, you have to admit the plot is interesting, a woman hellbent on suicide because her husband, the love of her life, has died, then meeting a man who's killed his mother and taking him in for no apparent reason. Mix in a bit of Westminster skulduggery and you have a recipe for some racy writing and hijinks to boot.
I still can't decide whether I think this is literature though.