Jumping the Queue

New
Paperback
2006
$8.13

Matilda Poliport, recently widowed and largely estranged from her four adult children, has decided to End It All. She has cleaned her cottage, given away her beloved pet goose and burnt any incriminating letters. Now all that remains for her to do is eat her picnic, take her pills and swim out into the ocean. But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is interrupted when she foils the suicide bid of another lost soul - Hugh Warner, on the run from the police - and life begins again for them both. Life, however, is never that simple and awkward questions demand answers. What, for example, was Matilda's husband Tom doing in Paris? Why does Matilda's next door neighbour see UFOs in the skies of Cornwall? And why did Hugh kill his mother?

Synopsis

Matilda Poliport, recently widowed and largely estranged from her four adult children, has decided to End It All. She has cleaned her cottage, given away her beloved pet goose and burnt any incriminating letters. Now all that remains for her to do is eat her picnic, take her pills and swim out into the ocean. But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is interrupted when she foils the suicide bid of another lost soul - Hugh Warner, on the run from the police - and life begins again for them both. Life, however, is never that simple and awkward questions demand answers. What, for example, was Matilda's husband Tom doing in Paris? Why does Matilda's next door neighbour see UFOs in the skies of Cornwall? And why did Hugh kill his mother?

$8.13

Save:$4.20 (34%)

Quantity

Temporarily out of stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01 Jun 2006
ISBN 10: 0099499150
ISBN 13: 9780099499152
Book Overview: 'A darkly comic tale of an ageing widow contemplating suicide but opting instead for a life-enhancing affair with a criminal on the run' - Express

Media Reviews

I loved it for its extraordinary combination of despair and wild black humour -- Julia Blackburn
Great verve and inventiveness * Times Literary Supplement *
A virtuoso performance of guileful plotting, deft characterisation and malicious wit * The Times *
Quriky, sexy and deeply fascinating -- Sheila Hancock

Author Bio

Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. Although she initially fulfilled her parent's expectations in marrying an aristocrat she then scandalised them when she divorced him in 1945 and moved in with the great love of her life, Eric Siepmann. The couple married in 1952, once his wife had finally been persuaded to divorce him. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel [Jumping the Queue] published at the age of seventy'. She went on to write a further nine novels, three of which were adapted for television, including the best-selling The Camomile Lawn. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.