British author Mavis Cheek, who wrote a series of comic novels "that cast an acute eye on middle-class marriage and relationships and marked her out as one of the wittiest commentators of her generation," died June 14, the Guardian reported. She was 75. Cheek began writing journalism and short stories in the 1980s and published her first novel, Pause Between Acts, in 1988 after an agent advised her that she was funny and should write as she spoke. The book won the She/John Menzies prize, and 14 books followed.
"When I started writing funny books, the bookshelves in shops had no category for me," she once observed. "They put me in Romance, and frankly, my books were as close to Romance as Rudolph Nureyev was to arc welding."
Cheek's other titles include Amenable Women (2008), Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (1993), Mrs. Fytton's Country Life (2000), Aunt Margaret's Lover (2003), The Sex Life of My Aunt (2002), Patrick Parker's Progress (2004), Yesterday's Houses (2007), and her last novel, The Lovers of Pound Hill (2011).
"It's an art, getting the comic timing right on the page," Cheek told comedian, writer, and actress Helen Lederer. "You don't just knock it out. I'm quite sure that if women writers had been promoted like some of their male counterparts, we'd have more women's humorous writing out there. How much we all long to pick up a book and laugh our socks off. Women can do that for you: as in real life, so on the page." In 2020, she received the recognition award by Comedy Women in Print, which acknowledges witty women writers who have contributed significantly during their lifetime.
Beginning in 2010, Cheek spent several years working for the Marlborough Literature Festival. Nick Fogg, Mayor of Marlborough, said, "I met Mavis shortly after the inception of the Literature Festival at a party at Aldbourne. She accepted my invitation to join with alacrity and proved a vital force with her knowledge and enthusiasm. Her constant theme was 'Back to Basics'--she shunned the cult of the celebrity writer whose fame had been forged elsewhere. She got us off on the funding campaign by inviting the Chairman of ALCS down to Marlborough and we had a meeting in the Mayor's Parlour: the grant that was forthcoming really set the festival on its way. Her conviviality and relaxed approach made her a pleasure to be with. Whether we could have done it without her is a question--thanks to her--that we don't have to ask."