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The Last Hours of Sandra Lee
1961
Hogarth Press
Cover Design by John Woodcock
This is a study of what the author believes to be an essential part of the make-up of every good woman, a wish to be bad.
Perhaps in most cases only a vague longing, a private pain on a plane with nostalgia - but with Sandra Lee the matter comes to a head. Marriage to a man she loves is imminent: Yet her immediate present is concerned with the Christmas break-up party in a London office where she works as a secretary.
Most of the action of the novel takes place during the Saturnalian atmosphere of this party, where anything can happen and much does; and where we follow with mounting suspense the exotic Miss Lee's desperate wish for a Past with which to face the future.
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In 1965 this novel was made into a film called 'The Wild Affair' starring Terry-Thomas and Nancy Kwan.
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Criticism
An office party to end all office parites - and a good girl who makes up her mind to be very, very bad…Superb.
Time Magazine
A splendid specimen of female sexiness.
Playboy
An innocent with exotic flesh.
San Francisco Examiner
Her office colleagues regard her, variously, as a good-time Charlie type, a near-delinquent, dream, screwy, a solid worker, a happy-go-lucky, and a bloody bitch. Each in a way is right.
Saturday Review
Mr Sansom is an artist, and one suspects that this is the definitive work on a hallowed subject. It is...hilarious.
Baltimore Sun
What happens is...touching.
NY Herald Tribune
Graphic...scalpel sharp.
Chicago Tribune
Great comic, ironic and poetic skill...colossal fun.
Anthony Burgess
Writing with a wry, sure sense of absurdity, the author proves again that he is a superb literary entertainer.
Time Magazine
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