Slippery When Wet (Transita) [Paperback]

"Goodman writes with flair and panache, and the narrative fizzes along." The Times"

When Maggie's husband dies in the bed of another woman, she surges out of their stately home. She heads East, towards family wealth, touching down in Bangladesh. A beautiful young man, Sepen, welcomes her at the airport, and shepherds her through the culture shock of his country. As their relationship becomes sexual, he starts to crack her English veneer. When she becomes ill, she needs him. When she grows strong again, she needs him even more. Maggie journeys on to Thailand. In releasing her husband's ashes into the River Kwai, she steps clear of her past. It's too damn stupid to think of Sepen as part of her future. Surely it is! This is an intricate and revealing novel which plays with age, culture, loss and desire to reveal the journeys across those boundaries.

This book was written as a present for a dear woman’s 60th birthday, to prove that a fine vintage blends youth with experience. It shows life doesn’t dim with age. We’re free to flare brighter than ever. Maggie, the matriarch of this book, is quintessentially English. Her journey into Asia is not about abandoning her Englishness, but updating it. She crosses boundaries of religion, culture, age and taste. The discoveries she makes, in the outside world as well as in herself, are wild and beautiful. Slippery When Wet’s about how love can help us break through our society’s limitations, and step into a freedom we scarcely dare imagine.

Slippery When Wet emerges from the author's own lifetime rubbing Englishness against the edge of different civilizations, having worked in China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Holland, Germany, Italy and Qatar, and lived in England, Santa Fe and the Pyrenees. Martin Goodman's first novel was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. In his words: 'After years of pushing non-fiction to its limits, writing books that tell stories l'd never dared to imagine, Slippery When Wet marks my return to the novel. It is as true, as bold and daring, as I know how to write'.