The Pumpkin Eater

Mrs Armitage has three husbands in her past, one in her present and a numberless army of children. They are building a great glass tower in the countryside, in which they will live happily ever after.

‘Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater ;Had a wife and couldn’t keep her…’;;In this extraordinary, semi-autobiographical novel, Penelope Mortimer depicts a married woman’s breakdown in 1960s London. With three husbands in her past, one in her present and a numberless army of children, Mrs Armitage is astonished to find herself collapsing one day in Harrods. Strange, unsettling and shot through with black comedy, this is a moving account of one woman’s realisation that marriage and family life may not, after all, offer all the answers to the problems of living.