Published: 4 March 2010
BY PIERS PLOWRIGHT

WENDY Perriam’s latest collection of short stories is dedicated to her daughter Pauline who was dying of cancer while she was writing them, so it’s probably no accident that there is a sense of loneliness and loss in this book. 

But Perriam being one of our consistently funniest writers, the stories are not gloomy. 

Tragedy, as Anton Chekhov – the greatest short-story writer of all – knew, hovers on the edge of farce and in Perriam’s universe, nothing is neat and tidy and there are no easy resolutions.

The Queen’s Margarine offers 14 brief, sometimes acerbic, but always bracing short stories. 

It is a form Perriam’s loves precisely because, unlike a novel, it can arise from a whim or a chance happening, whose random, open-ended energy it can share. 

• The Queen’s Margarine. By Wendy Perriam is published by Robert Hale £18.99.

• Tonight (Thursday March 4), Piers Plowright talks to actor and author Andrew Sachs about his life and work in the Lifelines series at Burgh House, New End Square, NW3, 7.30pm, £12/Friends of Burgh House £10