Lisa's Reviews > The Pumpkin Eater

Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater is a brilliant book, and I am not surprised to find from GoodReads that it has been reissued as a classic by NYRB. (The copy up here is a well-loved Penguin from 1979.) Published in 1962, The Pumpkin-Eater pre-dates all the feminist writing that was so exhilarating to read as the sixties progressed, but I knew Mortimer’s name because I’ve read something of hers before. (Daddy’s Gone A-hunting, I think, but it’s too long ago to be sure).

For those who have forgotten their nursery rhymes, (or sadly never knew any) the title derives from this rhyme:

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

(*shudder* When you think how ancient this rhyme is, it is quite horrible to think how it reflects confining women’s lives over the centuries).

Mortimer’s novel begins with an unnamed wife in a psychiatrist’s chair and the black humour is evident from the start. He is the classic patronising male of the sixties (and if you think you know this type now, trust me, you have no idea what they were like when their power was unbridled and our courage was prudently tentative).

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/06/21/th...