War Paint

Heavily made-up, flaunting ``long, dangling purple ear-rings'' and liberally doused with ``Soir de Paris'' perfume, eccentric, exuberant schoolteacher Kay Roper arrives in the English mining village of Padmore in the early 1940s. Exceptionally outspoken about a number of taboo subjects (including women's rights, personal hygiene and sexuality), the vivacious and enterprising Kay brings a reverence for sensuality and beauty that both shocks and enchants the working-class residents of a town made especially bleak by the austerities and privations of wartime. Years later, Kay's death in a road accident unleashes a flood of interlocking recollections from the three people--her favorite student, her would-be lover and the secondary school's headmistress--whose lives she most influenced. With her death also comes the revelation of the beloved schoolteacher's most deeply guarded secret--one that makes Wakefield's ( Lot's Wife ) new novel much more than just a nostalgic paean to an opinionated educator. Though Kay's enlightened utterances occasionally take on a preachy, overly prescient tone, for the most part her story is a playful and thought-provoking examination of what it means to be a woman. (July)