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INTRODUCTION

Mary Wesley burst onto the publishing scene in England ten years ago - at the age of seventy - and quickly became one of her most beloved authors. Since then, Wesley's eight subsequent novels have been British bestsellers, enchanting audiences around the world with her keen sensibility and wry wit. With An Imaginative Experience, Wesley adds a new and poignant dimension to her usual deft comedy of manners.

Her warmest, most involving, and most touching novel to date, An Imaginative Experience is sure to win Wesley the American acclaim she deserves.

ABOUT MARY WESLEY

Success came to Mary Wesley rather late in life: she was in her seventies when she began writing her novels about love and sex in the British upper middle classes.

She was born Mary Aline Mynors Farmar in Berkshire in 1912. The youngest of three children, she felt unloved and unwanted by her parents. Her father was an army officer, and the family frequently moved, so Mary had few friends of her own age. She married Lord Swinfen in 1936 and bore him two sons, but the relationship was not a happy one and ended in the early 1940s. During World War II she fell in love with the journalist Eric Siepmann and lived with him for several years before their marriage. Mary's parents showed their disapproval by cutting her out of their wills; when Siepmann died in 1970, she was left almost penniless, with a teenage son to support. Life was hard for the next 12 years, until she found her voice as a writer.

Wesley had written two books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal, in the late 1960s, but she was 70 years old when her first major novel, Jumping the Queue, was published. It was followed by such works as The Camomile Lawn (1984), which was subsequently adapted for television; Harnessing Peacocks (1986), about a young unmarried mother who turns to prostitution to pay for her son's education; and The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986). Her stories often feature a female character who resembles the author's younger self - a shy misfit surrounded by self-assured and independent women.

Wesley's novels became bestsellers, and money was no longer a problem. By writing about the upper-middle-class world she had grown up in, she regained the wealth she had lost when she turned her back on it to "live in sin" with her lover. She continued writing well into the 1990s, producing such works as A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994), and Part of the Furniture (1997). She lives in Devon, England.

Related Titles

With immense humor and style, Mary Wesley writes about the misfit's experience, the enduring and unexpected promise of romantic love, the pleasures of a warm hearth and good food, the outcast child, the erotic life of older women, the quirks of human nature, and the odd bargains we strike in pursuit of happiness. If An Imaginative Experience appealed to you, you might like these other books of hers, all available in paperback from Penguin.

A Sensible Life

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At a fashionable summer resort in Brittany in 1926, ten-year-old Flora Trevelyan meets and intrigues three boys who grow into rivals for her love. Shy and introverted, Flora finds love a disillusioning business and vows to live "a sensible life"- until a chance encounter in middle age.

Not That Sort of Girl

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Rose Peel looks back on her marriage to kindly Ned and her long-standing affair with dashing Mylo. Who would have thought this respectable sixty-seven-year-old matron was "that sort of girl?" "Funny and sexy and contrary and mad....Wesley understands the ages and stages of love." — Milwaukee Journal

Jumping the Queue

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Recently widowed, Matilda Poliport's plans for a discreet suicide at the seaside are first interrupted by a police bulletin about a young man who has murdered his mother with a tea tray (which she finds hilarious) and then by running into "the Matricide" himself. "A virtuoso performance of guileful plotting, deft characterization, and malicious wit." — The Times (London)

Second Fiddle

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Marriage has never appealed to forty-five-year-old Laura Thornby. But she finds her cherished detachment deserting her when she begins an affair with a struggling young writer named Claud Bannister, and finds herself playing second fiddle to a character of his creation.

A Dubious Legacy

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On a midsummer weekend in 1954, two proper young Englishmen set out for a friend's country house with their girls, Barbara and Antonia. Planning to propose marriage, James and Matthew spark a drama that spins itself out over the next four decades. "As a purveyor of social comedy, she ranks among the best."— The New York Times Book Review

The Vacillations of Poppy Carew

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Does Poppy hate Edmund for leaving her for a richer woman? How about now that he wants her back? Should she go to bed with Fergus, the owner of Fernival's Fun Funerals, or settle down and marry the pig farmer who really loves her? Decisions, decisions. "A charming love story by one of the first-division novelists."— The Times (London)

The Camomile Lawn

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At the edge of the Cornwall cliffs, five cousins gather to play childhood games one last time. The outbreak of World War II makes some of their adolescent promises come true and shatters others forever. "Demonstrates a wonderful sense of the absurd." - The Washington Post

Harnessing Peacocks

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After fleeing the family who insisted she terminate her unexpected pregnancy, Hebe spends twelve years living happily alone with her son in a seaside town, exercising her two chief talents in life: cooking and making love – for profit. But then the separate strands of her life become entangled...."Tremendously lively, very funny, touching, spirited."- Good Housekeeping

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY WESLEY

Sylvester Wykes' life changes forever when he witnesses a woman leap from a moving train to save a sheep. Julia Piper finds that in caring for a garden, she brings herself back to life. Through acts of imagination, Mary Wesley's characters in An Imaginative Experience find the strength to rediscover themselves, and even to love.

From her house in Devon, England, Mary Wesley reveals the imagination behind An Imaginative Experience, and talks about finding time to write, the courage of women, men who need managing, and the perils of retirement - among other things.

Sylvester's unpublished novel began with a quote by A. N. Wilson: "Falling in love is the greatest imaginative experience of which most human beings are capable." Do you believe this is so, or that it is an experience among many?

Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse. They may turn out to be a great disappointment, or perhaps they may be full of enchanting surprises.

And when people without imagination fall in love?

Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.

Why did you pick this title for the novel?

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished. That's what this book is. When he sees the girl righting the sheep, it's a pure act of imagination that hooks the man, captures his interest, starts him thinking. He begins to wonder what someone who'd do something so daft would be like.

Are Sylvester and Julia particularly imaginative?

Sylvester is. Julia too. If not, she would never have married Giles. She looked on the rape as an aberration, and then realized he was an absolute swine.

In an interview in the London Sunday Times, you refer to "a game women play - the art of managing men." In An Imaginative Experience, though, Rebecca manages herself right out of the picture, and Sylvester is drawn to a very different sort of woman. Have the rules of the game changed in a generation?

Rebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.

Do you think people require management?

Some do. My first husband would never make up his mind in less than five years, so I used to get him to think that whatever course of action needed to be taken was his idea. Then he'd go right ahead. It's not a one-way trip; men persuade women, human beings manage each other. Now it's called manipulation. We manage our children. You know what it's like to persuade a pigheaded child to do something they don't want to. If they hear the same suggestion from someone else, they'll go right off and do it.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning. A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, "Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire," and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

Others, if they've got the wits, stay interested in what's going on, whether gardening or politics or literature. I have a garden, and I'm passionately interested in young people. In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

In the same interview there's a wonderful quote from your late husband: "The reason I love you is that you take such appalling risks." Do you think risk-taking always pays off?

It was one of my sons who referred to my taking risks. Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it's a lot of fun!

Do you think women are more courageous than men?

Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in battle.

The way Sylvester and Julia look is not described in much detail. Why?

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.

Loveless marriage is a theme in many of your books, never more strongly so than in An Imaginative Experience. Yet most of your characters still seek an enduring romantic partnership. What makes for a happy marriage?

Working at it forever - with love and humor.

Why do you think so many marriages end unhappily?

Each one has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage. We all lie to each other, present some sort of front. People try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier. When I was young, there were only two grounds for divorce: desertion and adultery. It was all very ponderous. Not being able to stand each other wasn't a reason. A lot of people stuck it out and were very unhappy. It's a very difficult subject. The effect on the children can be very bad.

Nowadays, and I think it's really sensible, people live together. If it doesn't work they part, one hopes without acrimony. They marry when they want to have children. There's no stigma. There's no vocabulary either. I don't like the word "partner," it makes me think of a law firm. I like the word "lover."

Your mother warned you that having your nose in a book all the time "might put off eligible men." Did it?

It was actually a rich aunt, who kept producing suitable young men for me. I was always reading a book instead of talking to them, and she used to complain.

Do you think "bookishness" is a drawback for women today?

No. I think it's a great advantage. I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse.

Sylvester is "not fond of unsought advice." What about you?

I think "unsought advice is a curse of God" and try not to give it. A sure way to lose friends!

As you write your books, do you think about who will be reading them?

No, never. I don't write for any particular kind of person. I think I'm very lucky in that, because I get letters from boys and girls from age fourteen up to old people. Curiously enough, the most thought out and carefully-considered letters are from men in America.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Clodagh and Madge blame Julia for Giles' and Christy's deaths, and Julia herself says to the sympathetic priest, "Don't you see? I am responsible. If I had been sensible and bloody-minded, Christy would be alive now." Does she in fact bear any responsibility? Is her desire to "celebrate" Giles' death (as she struggles to blot out Christy's) reprehensible? Considering that she was abandoned physically by her father and emotionally by her mother, where does Julia's moral center come from?
    
2. Other than "the impression of a white face, black eyes, squared mouth shouting at the guard, and brown hair ruffled by the wind," no physical description is given of Julia. Even less is said about what Sylvester looks like. Mary Wesley says she deliberately left Sylvester's and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination. How do you see them? In the absence of specifics, how and why does a reader form a mental picture of the different characters? What sort of cues are most important?
    
3. Sylvester calls Julia "a wounded person," and Mr. Patel describes Sylvester as "a gentlemen with nothing to hold." Certainly both have been damaged by their experiences of love. How do you think this will affect their own relationship? Does each have the capacity to love deeply again? What might the future hold for them?
    
4. "I think Celia has been utterly outrageous," says Rebecca, "and I am a feminist." Mary Wesley says wryly, "I don't really know what a feminist is but I often meet people who claim to be one." Complaining that "feminists in this country [England] can be unnecessarily aggressive, which I find tiresome," she nevertheless agreed with the definition of a feminist as someone who believes a man and a woman should receive equal pay for equal work, and pointed out that "the word has become almost a term of abuse, in some way." Do you agree? How would your group define "feminist?" What do you think it means to Rebecca? Would Julia qualify?
    
5. Sylvester decides that he'd confused love with lust, and married for lust. How do those two factors play out in Julia's marriage? How about in Clodagh's affair with Giles?
    
6. An Imaginative Experience contains a number of entertaining secondary characters who make use of Sylvester's and Julia's misadventures for their own purposes. Are they benign or not? Does Rebecca really think she has Sylvester's best interests at heart? What motivates Maurice Benson? How about Madge? Do these characters remind you of real people, or are they exaggerated? Do Rebecca and Maurice deserve each other?
    
7. After running into Rebecca dancing at the wild Christmas party, Sylvester comments, "If I put all these connections and meetings into my novel, nobody would believe it. Too contrived, they'd say. Things like that do not happen in real life. It's a rotten, rotten book." Julia responds, "But they do." Do you agree with Julia? If indeed the author feels it runs the risk of making An Imaginative Experience a "rotten, rotten book," why does coincidence play such a considerable part in the story? Is that a strength or a weakness?
    
8. Do you know what a "twitcher" is? How about a "lurcher?" (A twitcher is a birdwatcher, and a lurcher, says Wesley, "a kind of dog.") Does it matter?
    
9. A theme in the novel is racial tolerance, exemplified by Julia's compassionate friendship with the Patels (as well as by Janet's increasing intolerance of Tim's racist remarks). What does the presence of this gentle, humorous family add to the novel? How would it be different if they were not Asian? Despite Mary Wesley's aversion to dispensing advice, could a novel be considered an effective way of doing exactly that?