From the back cover:

"'Miss Hawkins looked at her watch. It was two-thirty. If everything went according to schedule, she could safely reckon to be dead by six o'clock.'

But by the day's end, events have taken a dramatic turn and Miss Hawkings is sentenced to live. Forcibly retired, she is presented by her colleagues with a five-year diary. Programmed since childhood to total obedience, Miss Hawkings slavishly follows her diary's commands until the impossible happens - she meets a man. As a last reprieve from the horrors of loneliness she embarks on adetermined full-scale mission to taste life's secret pleasures - and pains - until the cup runs dry..."

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I liked this surprisingly lot! It's about a woman traumatized by her childhood experiences in an orphanage and a man whose self-esteem is shattered by his incontinent and mean old mother and who becomes a male prostitute. It's filled with black humour, which I loved. I must admit though that I got a bit bored about halfway into the book, but as the second part started and the catastrophe started to unveil, I was again drawn into the story.

If you look closely, you'll notice that the moustache on the face is a bit off. That's because that's not a real moustache. That's poor Miss Hawking's face in the mirror, and on the mirror she's painted a pair of manly moustache. That way she can pretend the face in the mirror is not hers but Maurice's, a made-up friend of hers. He keeps her company, except for the times she has to put him under the bed to punish him. That tells what kind of weird little book this is. :)

Taking to a meet-up. I hope this finds a new reader, it's much more fun than you'd think based on the cover.

I'm so easily talked into checking out weird books... Might take some time before I get to this one, though. Mt TBR is casting a very long shadow on my armchair *sigh*

I couldn't carry on till the interesting part, sorry 😧 Well, it's high time the book gets to travel!

Book is waiting for new readers on the book exchange shelf! Happy reading!