Norma Fontaine lives in a perfect woman's world of handy tips and sensible advice. Whether it's choosing the right foundation garment or practicing feminine allure through meticulous grooming, Norma measures life by the standards set in the magazines she reads. So when she bumps into Mr. Hands and he suggests taking tea at the Excella cafe how could she possibly refuse? What could be more exhilarating, or more appropriate?

But Norma discovers quickly that the world is far less delightful - and more sinister - than she had ever supposed. And while her brother Roy seems to fare better and his romance with the girl from the newsagent's blossoms, it is not long before dark secrets threaten everything he cares for. Norma must decide if she is prepared to sacrifice life in a woman's world for the sake of the young couple's everlasting happiness.

For five years Rawle labored 17 hours a day, seven days a week, assembling 40,000 fragments of text from women's magazines to produce a tale that moves with the pace of a thriller, with as many cliffhanging chapter endings and swerves of story. The magazines, whose blended recipe of romance and practicality provide the source material, date from the early 1960s, and are full of toothpaste ads, rhapsodic riffs of garment ecstasy, admonitions about cads and layabouts...but, more poignantly with hindsight, offer a young man, seeking to be recognized as a woman, solid rules to obey. But falling in love with a crisply coiffed woman makes it difficult for this young man to be able to follow two sets of rules at once...

Graham Rawle (London, UK) is a collage artist and writer. His weekly Lost Consonants series appeared in The Guardian ‘Weekend’ magazine for 15 years. He has produced other regular series for The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. Among his published books are The Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, and Diary of an Amateur Photographer.

He has lectured and exhibited his work internationally, heading the design team that created the ‘Hi-Life’ supermarket installation for EXPO 2000 in Hanover. As director of the Niff Institute, in 2001 he created a range of limited edition art pieces that form the Niff Actuals product range.

Graham lives and works in London and is a regular visiting lecturer on the MA Sequential Design and Illustration course at the University of Brighton. He is married to an American woman and is a frequent visitor to Minneapolis MN.

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Here's a link to a spread: http://www.grahamrawle.com/books_womans/popup.html