Mavis Cheek, who has died aged 75, was the author of 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.
She began writing journalism and short stories in the 1980s and published her first novel after an agent advised her that she was funny and should write as she spoke. Pause Between Acts was published in 1988, winning the She/John Menzies prize for a first novel, and 14 books followed.
At first she struggled to find her niche: “When I started writing funny books, the bookshelves in shops had no category for me. They put me in Romance, and frankly, my books were as close to Romance as Rudolph Nureyev was to arc welding.”
Her novels celebrate her affection for the absurd alongside the tragic-comedic elements often found in domestic relationships – usually ones that disappointed. Amenable Women (2008) tells how a woman, freed from an infuriating husband by a fatal balloon incident, somewhat bizarrely and triumphantly goes on to become deeply involved with the life of Anne of Cleves.
In Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (1993), the protagonist is an overweight, reclusive, romantic novelist who is asked to make her books sexier in order to sell; Mavis’s lampooning of the cut-throat literary world is apt and cruelly funny. Mrs Fytton’s Country Life (summarised in one review as “jokes, revenge, an errant husband coming back to roost”) appeared in 2000, followed by Aunt Margaret’s Lover (2003), the research for which involved Mavis meeting 30 men in six weeks for champagne dates at the Ritz.
When Mavis began writing The Sex Life of My Aunt (2002), there was an idea it could become an autobiography, but since it “declined into self-pity”, the book became her 10th novel. Dilly social-climbs her way out of poverty into the perfect life of soft furnishings and status only to sabotage it all for the love of a man she meets on a train.
This was followed by Patrick Parker’s Progress (2004) and Yesterday’s Houses (2007), another novel that drew on her own experiences. Mavis wrote about what she knew: “Anyone who knows me well could point to the bits that are me,” she once said.
Her last novel, The Lovers of Pound Hill, appeared in 2011, and three of her books were reissued in 2019. “It’s an art, getting the comic timing right on the page,” she said to me. “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.”
I first met Mavis at the Chelsea Arts Club in London in the late 90s. The venue was her suggestion. I was wondering if one of her novels might be available for being optioned. Once we established that I had no immediate plans (or resources) for a full-scale film, Mavis told me Dawn French’s people had been in touch and we let the subject lie. As did they. But she and I did become friends.
Every year she would offer a different but humorous excuse as to exactly why she could not attend my Christmas party – written neatly on cards purchased from her many trips to art galleries and museums with friends.
But we met on other occasions. Upstairs in the bar at Waterstones, upstairs in the French House in Soho and more recently in her restful garden, full of horticultural splendour provided by her daughter, Bella.
She was born Mavis Wilson, in Wimbledon, south-west London, and brought up with her sister by their mother, Hilda (nee Lonsdale), who took factory work to make ends meet, while their sharp-tongued grandmother looked after them. Apart from when her father, John, made a fleeting appearance when she was seven, Mavis’s world revolved around women. “It was perceived that women had strength and men could be bad for you,” she said in an interview in 2006.
She went to a secondary modern school, Whatley Avenue in Raynes Park, and joined the local Young Communist League, where at the age of 16 she met Chris Cheek, whom she married at 21 and divorced a few years later. She formed a bond, however, with her mother-in-law, who encouraged Mavis’s interest in modern art and literature.
After leaving school at 16 without any significant qualifications, Mavis took a job as a receptionist at the art publishers and gallery Editions Alecto, where she dealt with artists including David Hockney. It was there she began composing short stories and poetry on a typewriter, in between answering the phone and greeting people with noted enthusiasm.
This was 1964, and Mavis enjoyed the latest fashion of miniskirts and multicoloured tights. Colleagues remember her sparkly blue eyes, passion for art and charismatic manner. She met and lived for 15 years with the artist Basil Beattie, with whom she had her daughter.
During this time, Mavis enrolled at Hillcroft College for Women in Surbiton, where she took a general arts degree, and joined a local writer’s circle in Richmond. After the publication of Pause Between Acts and the separation from Basil in 1990 she continued writing novels while looking after Bella.
In 2018 she and I taught a comedy novel course at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s national writing centre in the Highlands, called, rather ambitiously, “Finding your funny bone”. Mavis easily did all the heavy lifting with plot, character and structure, while I tackled the humour workshop element with lots of props. The students fought over how many one-on-one tutorials they could get with Mavis, on the basis of her quick analysis of text and ways to problem-solve.
This passion for mentorship and ease with students – she also taught creative writing to prisoners at Holloway in London and Erlestoke in Wiltshire – was influenced by her own sense of being “overlooked” and “designated thick by a very silly education system”.
From 2010, during the period she lived in the Wiltshire village of Aldbourne, Mavis spent several years working for the Marlborough literature festival, with the intention of bringing excellent authors, and fewer celebrities, to new audiences.
In 2020 Mavis received the recognition award by Comedy Women in Print, which acknowledges witty women writers who have contributed significantly during their lifetime.
She is survived by Bella and her sister Maggie.
• Mavis Mary Cheek, novelist, born 25 February 1948; died 14 June 2023
