War Paint - Hardcover

In Wakefield's (Lot's Life, not reviewed) novel, which manages the feat of being both sweet and wily, three narrators reminisce about Kay Roper, a schoolteacher who arrived in the quiet British village of Padmore to teach in a girls' secondary school in 1942, and who has been killed unceremoniously by a swerving postal van. Janet Haycock, an adoring former student, recalls how Roper handled her charges with respect. She instilled a sense of pride in them, and insisted on shaking each one's hand individually and giving a formal and personal good-bye at the end of the day. Patrick Harper, a miner and Roper's neighbor, remembers how he trailed around after her on lovesick jaunts. He also recalls how Roper ministered to him when he was in the hospital after he almost lost an arm in a mining accident. Mrs. Chaplin, once the headmistress of the school and now living in a nursing home, reminisces about Roper's defense of her heavy use of makeup and flashy clothing, as well as the day that she produced a jar of salve that soothed the bad case of crabs that the snooty Mrs. Pickett appeared to have caught from her husband when he returned from the front. Pickett threw off her knickers right there in the headmistress's office and allowed Roper to apply it. Being forthright about sex and sexuality was Roper's strong suit. She organized an after-school group with mothers and used the time to instruct them on how to find mutual satisfaction with their husbands, and she kept a chart in her classroom of each student's menstrual period. These facts matched up oddly with her personal life, since she seemed dedicated only to her father and never dated. There is a great deal of gentle humor here, and Roper's death ultimately reveals several surprises. A delightful picture of village life, and then some. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Heavily made-up, flaunting "long, dangling purple ear-rings" and liberally doused with "Soir de Paris" perfume, eccentric, exuberant schoolteacher Kay Roper arrives in the English mining village of Padmore in the early 1940s. Exceptionally outspoken about a number of taboo subjects (including women's rights, personal hygiene and sexuality), the vivacious and enterprising Kay brings a reverence for sensuality and beauty that both shocks and enchants the working-class residents of a town made especially bleak by the austerities and privations of wartime. Years later, Kay's death in a road accident unleashes a flood of interlocking recollections from the three people--her favorite student, her would-be lover and the secondary school's headmistress--whose lives she most influenced. With her death also comes the revelation of the beloved schoolteacher's most deeply guarded secret--one that makes Wakefield's ( Lot's Wife ) new novel much more than just a nostalgic paean to an opinionated educator. Though Kay's enlightened utterances occasionally take on a preachy, overly prescient tone, for the most part her story is a playful and thought-provoking examination of what it means to be a woman.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.