Joyce Wayne brings to life the complexities of Victorian life, first in
County Devon and then in London’s East End.
The ‘big picture’ is about
one woman’s life, class conflict, religious intolerance, suspicion and
betrayal. The central figure is Cordelia, a strong-minded Jewish woman
who is caught between her desire to be true to herself and her need to
be accepted by English society.Cordelia Tilley is the daughter of a
Jewish mother and an Anglican father.
Her mother has groomed her for a
life in English society while her father, a tough publican, has shown no
tolerance for his wife’s social climbing or the conceits of their
perspicacious daughter. Cordelia’s mother dies from typhoid fever, she
tries to run the family ‘s establishment, she falls prey to a local
industrialist, she gives birth to a son, she is tormented by her husband
and his family.
Finally, she is rescued by suffragette friends and sets
off to start a new life in London.The Cook’s Temptation is about a
woman who is unpredictable, both strong and weak willed, both kind and
heinous, victim and criminal. It is a genuine Victorian saga, full of
detail, twists and turns, memorable scenes, full of drama and pathos.
“Joyce Wayne’s debut novel, The Cook's Temptation, has the stately bearing of a nineteenth century novel – the mercilessness of Thomas Hardy, the black allegory of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the tense marriages of George Eliot. It is a story of how people become what you blame them for being.” – Ian Williams, poet and fiction writer, short listed for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize
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