That Awkward Age | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

That Awkward Age

Dec 1, 2025 8:20 PM

Author:Mary Selby

That Awkward Age

When Robert Peabody, the new vicar, moved into the village of Bumpstaple, the villagers were naturally agog. And when they discovered that, not only was he handsome enough to send the spinsters of the parish all a-flutter, he was also divorced, and a single parent, it was agreed that he could not be allowed to remain single for long. Mavis Entwhistle, whose pastry had caused successive vicars to consider fasting as a desirable alternative lifestyle, had decided that her surprisingly lovely daughter Sally (for Mavis was no more endowed with a beautiful face than with a light hand at the pastryboard) would make the perfect vicar's wife. Sally, having beaten off her mother's attempts to marry her off to the washing machine repair man, the milkman and the baker's assistant, refused to meet this latest candidate for her hand, until a chance encounter in the mobile library led to some surprising and decidedly un-vicarish behaviour.

Robert's son, meanwhile, was trying to cope with adolescent confusion in the form of Claire, whom he met on the school bus. Claire had quite enough to cope with, what with her spots and the dreadful embarrassment of her mother Tessa's advancing pregnancy - and at her age, too! And as though this were not enough, she was having to put up with the child from her hell, her cousin Hugh, who had come to stay while his parents were abroad. When Robert planned to hold a new-style Carol Service and Hugh decided to introduce a little realism into the Christmas story in the shape of Tessa's pet pig, the villagers began to wonder just what was in store for them.

Reviews

A Wing and a Prayer: A thoroughly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek look at village life...terrific fun

—— Daily Express

Verrisimo's pleasure in his own absurd intertextual universe is infectious

—— Times Literary Supplement

A true literary mystery in its own right, as well as a homage to Borges

—— Financial Times

The definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love story. No easy feat, that

—— Entertainment Weekly

It is hard to see who could have done the job better than Schmidt

—— Times Literary Supplement

Schmidt gives us a chance to settle down with poets we wish we had known better

—— Daily Telegraph

A satisfying selection that reminds us that Lawrence didn't just write about animals, Betjeman wasn't always jolly, and Plath is more interesting for her collapsed perspectives than for her self-exposure

—— New Statesman

The selections from the greats are generous and well chosen

—— Guardian

Being an Amis novel it’s not without the odd good joke, and he is, of course, incapable of writing and inelegant line. It’s almost as if he alone can sense both the golden ratio of a sentence, and its perfect rhythm: it’s like he’s Michelangelo and Keith Moon

—— Sunday Telegraph

Full of hilarious set-pieces, wisecracks and wordplay.

—— Daily Express

Tillyard is a fluent and attractive chronicler of detail and some of her imaginative liberties are ingenious

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph

This saga of lives swept up in the Peninsular War recalls Georgette Heyer at her best...impossible to put down

—— Kate Saunders , Saga

A thrilling romance brought to life with exquisite detail

—— Prima

A prodigious talent able to combine meticulous research with novelistic devices...there is much to enjoy and admire

—— Norma Clarke , Times Literary Supplement

Fluently written and impeccably researched

—— The Lady

Gripping

—— Easy Living

It is time we stopped thinking of the historical novel as a genre, and an inferior one at that. If its ostensible subject matter means that it doesn't attempt to tell us how we live now, nevertheless a novel set back in time may, if it is good, say as much about what it is to be alive as one set in the next street or another country today. Tides of War is such a novel. It is diverting, but not a diversion

—— The Spectator

A well written, engaging read...beautifully observed

—— History Today

A vivid account of a couple of years in the Peninsula Campaign and a sympathetic portrait of those left behind

—— Joanna Hines , Literary Review

A delicious novel by an experienced author who captures the scientific atmosphere of the early 19th century with a devastating study of infidelity

—— Colin Gardiner , Oxford Times

The real life players of the Napoleonic era spring to life

—— i

Compelling

—— Big Issue

Highly assured and almost educational with its broad sweep of history

—— Jane Housham , Guardian

Tillyard’s achievement is in this original portray log the Regency era and its relevance to our own time

—— Philippa Williams , The Lady

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