Paperback published by Brown Dog Books 23rd March 2023
ISBN 9781839526053
Mary a bright, very pretty and yet serious girl, by dint of her courage, common-sense and honesty, manages to navigate the delusion and the warped thinking of many of her contemporaries, to emerge as a good-natured and right-minded young woman who knows her own mind and who can tell good from bad. Tested by right and wrong relationships and the colourful though dubious vicissitudes of the film world, but strengthened by her shrewd university flat-mate and her loving if naive parents, our pilgrim wends her way along paths where there is no moral consensus, to end up happily as a straight-thinking yet quietly sparkling heroine.
Mary and the Seven Devils is also an expose of the depravity and self-serving corruption of many of those engaged on the care band-wagon.
Extract from chapter four page 32
I am the only child and my parents were delighted to see me and to pamper me over Christmas.
To the question, And how is Newcastle?’ I had no simple answer.
‘Well, I like my subjects.
Mummy of course, plumbed the topic of boyfriends.
‘I’m seeing a young lecturer but it’s not overly serious.’
‘Is he kind and well disposed ?’
‘If not I would dispose of him and not to kindly either.’ She smiled.
Extract from chapter four page 36
A few days before the Easter break, as I walked through Branding Park, I espied a spindly urchin slinging briefcase under a bush. I recovered it. Inside were note books, a folder of essays, some chocolate biscuits and a wallet. It belonged to professor Jones.
I went to the Politics Department and knocked on his door. As I entered and he saw the briefcase, he stood up, grasped my hand and thanked me profoundly.
‘It was snatched from the passenger seat of my car whilst I was filling up at the petrol station.’ After combing it, he said, ‘ I think all that’s missing is the money from the wallet.’
‘The cheque book gave me your name. In fact,’ I added with a touch of dry humour, ‘ I almost tore the last cheque out from the back and bought myself a car.’
He gave a half laugh then bent forwards. ‘Well I wish you had. It was a paying in slip.’ I laughed. ‘
‘What’s your name?
‘Mary Fleet. General Arts.’
‘Thank you Mary. Thank you very much.’
About author Peter Morris
Peter Morris, the author of a number of novels and a retired anaesthetist, has lived and worked in Britain, and Scandinavia, and Europe. Here he writes in the first person, boldly penetrating he hopes the labyrinth of the female psyche in its late teens, as his heroine a modern day university student struggles with the deceptions and dualities of persona on offer and is tempted by that attitude of quasi jurisdiction over others which is so in vogue. His real objective though, is not to unpick any femmine impulse, but to emphasise the absolute necessity of finding your true self as Shakespeare says in Hamlet, To thine own self be true, or as the Delphic oracle would have it, know thyself.
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