'Wonderfully funny' Vogue
Tabitha's Beauty Parlour is a haven. The women who cross its portals enter a perfumed world where never a hard note is struck. To Tabitha, Beauty is a broad canvas from which she will draw out what she can. But when Chloe, Tabitha's trainee, sets out to prove that she can give her clients the makeover of a lifetime, the quest for feminine perfection achieves hilarious consequences . . .
Note from the author, Mavis Cheek...
'I wrote this initially as an expose of the beauty business which I thought deserved a satire. But as I went around the world, including the UK (I was travel writing quite a lot in those years) and visited many, many beauty salons, parlours, clinics – in London, Edinburgh,Turkey, USA, Greece, India and many other places, I began to see that the service of women to women – doing hair, doing massage, doing make-up – is as old as the hills – and that it was only in the big, expensive salons where the exploitation occurred. I learned many secrets, and heard many stories, some of which went into the book.
'It's a complex plot, again, and has a fairly devastating ending – but it is also much loved by my readers, and by me.'
Reviews
'A sharply observed social satire… wacky yet profound… Be wary, this book won't do much for your laughter lines.' Chic
'Glinting of wit, lacing her work with literary allusion, Mavis Cheek boldly brings satire up to date in a clever and funny novel.' The Times
