Fay Weldon Books In Order

The Life and Loves of a She Devil

This is not a book for everyone, but its admirers are vigorously enthusiastic. For example:Rhoda Koenig in New York Magazine, who calls it ‘…
a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’ Or Rosalyn Drexler, who said on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, ‘It affords a scintillating, mindboggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasized dishing out retribution for one wrong or another.’Or Carol E. Rinzler, who wrote on The Washington Post Book World’s front page, ‘…
what makes this a powerfully funny and oddly powerful book is the energy of the language and of the intellect that conceived it, an energy that vibrates off the pages and that makes SHE DEVIL as exceptional a book in the remembering as in the reading…
. a small, mad masterpiece.’

The Fat Woman’s Joke

Fay Weldon’s first novel, a sharp and witty parable on the way people see themselves. For several weeks, Esther Sussman had lived in a sordid flat in Earls Court. During the day she read science fiction novels. In the evenings she watched television. And she ate, and ate, and drank, and ate. She had not felt so secure since she spent her days in a pram. It had been her husband’s idea that they went on a diet. Together they would fight middle age flab and feel young again. It was the diet that had made Esther leave home. The lack of food had made her see things very clearly and she had looked at her life the daily dusting, sweeping, cooking, washing up and found it all pointless. She had not felt strong enough for marriage, and so she escaped. From the fastness of her Earls Court retreat Esther starts to recount the events leading up to her revelation to her friend Phyllis. ‘I suppose you really do believe your happiness is consequent upon your size?’ she asks. Phyllis does; Esther does not and triumphantly sets out to prove her point.

Down Among Women

Respectable wife, unmarried mother, divorcee, femme fatale these are roles that society demands from Scarlet, Jocelyn, Helen, Susan and Audrey. But things do not slot neatly into pigeon holes, and as the women negotiate around the events in their lives, they discover their real selves.

Female Friends

The main characters of ‘Female Friends‘ are three women, now in their forties, who became friends as children during the evacuation of wartime London. In a simultaneous unreeling of past and present, we watch them go about their lives with a great deal of pain, guilt, self deception, self irony and considerable grandeur. These women, dear friends, gossip unforgivably about one another, are exasperated by one another’s dependencies, find endless, carping fault with the others’ too easy acceptance of humiliation, inflict devastating criticism upon one another for their respective willingness to be used by men. And they love one another, for they see mirrored in their friends’ inadequacies their own unending struggles for self esteem and autonomy. Eerily, we love them too as, horribly flawed, they bumble through the delightful hell that Weldon has embroidered for our edification and entertainment.

Remember Me

A savagely satirical tale of marital revenge. Madeleine wants revenge; Madeleine wants to be remembered: Madeleine wants love. Who doesn’t? Madeleine is ex wife and chief persecutor of Jarvis, the architect. Why not? She hates him. Hilary is their daughter, growing fatter and lumpier every day under Madeleine’s triumphant care, and witness to the wrongs her mother suffered. For Jarvis has a clean new life with a clean new wife, Lily, and a nice new baby, Jonathan. The furniture is polished and there is orange juice for breakfast. Jarvis is content, or thinks he is, fending off Madeleine’s forays as best he can. Jarvis has a part time secretary too Margot, now the doctor’s wife, unremembered from the days of her youth. Margot, unacknowledged wife and mother, accepting, tending, nurturing his children and her own, complaisant in her lot. Then Madeleine, hurling out her dark reproaches from the other side of violent death, uncovers new familial links in the disruption she creates.

Praxis

A novel which tells the story of a woman from childhood to adulthood, beginning in wartime Brighton and spanning forty years.

The Heart Of The Country

Fay Weldon, the acclaimed author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil also a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr, once again tickles the myth of the suburban countryside in this invigorating romp through marital chaos and the battle of the sexes.

The Cloning of Joanna May

A scintillating, exuberant, ruthlessly acute observer of her time, author Fay Weldon leaps into a future where individual identity is infinitely more elusive. In The Cloing of Joanna May, she has created an enthralling novel about male control and female power, and a new age of women for whom almost anything is possible.

Darcy’s Utopia

This new edition of Ian Hoggs classic is this centurys ultimate reference work on the subject of military small arms. It has been fully updated and expanded by 64 pages to cover all small arms in military service during the 20th century and now includes many arms listings and photographs that did not appear in earlier editions. Recognized internationally as the leading authority on military small arms, author Ian Hogg was given free rein on this edition; he has delivered the ultimate reference edition for all interested in the history of these arms. Arms coverage includes: Pistols, Submachine Guns, Bolt Action Rifles, Automatic Rifles, Machine Guns, Anti Tank/Materiel Rifles and Ammunition. Small arms of 46 countries are covered. Over 800 photographs and illustrations.

Life Force

Weldon’s latest novel is about the glorious pleasure of sexuality and the havoc it can wreak when we succumb to it. It’s a story about marriage and infidelity, and the fact that one occasionally requires the other for survival. When Mr. Leslie Beck reappears in the lives of four friends three of them married, and all past paramours of Beck’s he revives the secrets and passions of the past.

Affliction

The author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil introduces us to Annette Horrocks, a pregnant London housewife who feels betrayed and manipulated by her philandering, New Age philosophy spouting, novelist husband.

Splitting

The author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil offers an incisive, witty portrait of Angelica, whose divorce splinters her personality into several bickering interior voices, including wronged Lady Rice, clever Jelly White, and promiscuous Angel.Tour.

Worst Fears

The award winning author of 20 previous novels delivers a scathing, witty tour de force. When Alexandra returns from an acting job in London to find her husband mysteriously dead and her female friends oddly attempting to smoothe out the tragedy she begins to be suspicious. Soon she is exploring a conspiratorial veil behind which lies the truth about her supposedly perfect marriage.

Rhode Island Blues

Smart, sexy, and infinitely charming, Rhode Island Blues tells the story of Sophia Moore, a loveless and guarded thirty four year old film editor in London who believes that her only living relative is her stormy and wild grandmother Felicity. Troubled by her mother’s long ago suicide and her father’s abandonment, Sophia overworks, incessantly contemplates her past, and continues a flat sexual affair with the famous director of her latest film. But when she travels to Rhode Island to help Felicity settle into a retirement center, she begins to unravel mysteries about her family history while Felicity learns to gamble, falls in love, and uncovers the truth about the center’s evil nurse Dawn. A hilarious tale of family secrets, nursing home high jinks, and late life love, Rhode Island Blues is Fay Weldon at her witty best.

The Bulgari Connection

The Bulgari Connection is the latest book by critically acclaimed author Fay Weldon, whom People magazine calls ‘wickedly funny.’ Once again she draws us into a wild, rollicking tale full of her trademark satirical wit and sharp observation. Grace McNab Salt is the recently divorced wife of millionaire Barley Salt, who has since married Doris Dubois, the young, slim host of TV’s ArtsWorld Extra. Grace has just emerged from jail, where she was sent for trying to run Doris over with her Jaguar in a supermarket parking lot in an act of revenge. All three attend a London charity ball held by socialite Lady Juliet, where painter Walter Wells auctions off a portrait of Juliet wearing a necklace crafted by the world famous Bulgari jewelers and Doris, mad with envy, quickly declares that she must have it. As Doris goes to extremes to obtain the necklace, Grace falls into a mad love affair with the painter of the necklace, Barley tries to keep from buying Doris the necklace, and everyone’s lives turn upside down. Weldon’s world is one of relationships: torrid affairs, lovers’ spite, and revenge. Full of clever women, breathless romance, insistent desires, and even a dose of the supernatural, The Bulgari Connection is a boisterously witty and stylish novel.

Mantrapped

A wonderful new slice of the bizarre from Weldon. Trisha had been rich and Trisha had been poor, and she knew it was better to be rich. But, even worse, now she was to be stripped of her identity. She is to swap sex, and her very soul, with young, handsome, trendy Peter Watson. She pas*ses him too close upon the stairs, and some might think what happens a first in mankind’s history is an improvement and some might not. Peter’s partner Doralee thinks not. Mantrapped is the continuing story of Fay Weldon, writer, mother, daughter, sister, cook, campaigner, juggler of life, time, work and money. Like Trisha she has been rich, and like Trisha she has been poor: like Trisha she has been well and truly man trapped, and unlike Trisha does not regret one bit. From 1960s London wild parties, no money to 1970s Somerset animals, wild parties, no money Weldon has lived a life rich in adventure and courage. The things you regret, as she points out, are what you don’t do, not what you do. In this vastly entertaining book she argues that in a world in which the writer can no longer hope to be anonymous, it is devious, and indeed dishonourable, to keep yourself out of your own novels. The reader, hoping for bread, should not be given stones.

She May Not Leave

Fay Weldon lets her incisive wit loose on a hot issue facing many modern families child care, and what can happen when that involves having a nanny under your roof.

Hattie and Martyn are the proud parents of newborn Kitty; both are in their early thirties, smart, handsome, and, for reasons of liberal principle, not married but partnered. All seems fine at first healthy baby, happy couple but when they have to decide who’ll look after little Kitty, things get complicated. Hattie’s dying to get back to work but Martyn fears employing foreign help might hurt his leftist political aspirations. Martyn capitulates when Agnieska arrives a Polish nanny who happens to be both domestic goddess and first rate belly dancer, the maker of a mean cup of cocoa who’s also educated in early childhood development. Having her in the house makes life livable again for the young couple, so when problems arise with her immigration papers Martyn and Hattie will do anything to keep her in the country. But will their decision to have Martyn marry her be the trouble free solution they envision?

The Spa

Fay Weldon’s latest novel, The Spa, is full of all the biting humor and glittering prose that made her name. Always sharp tongued and occasionally libidinous, it offers a glimpse of the despairs and dalliances of a set of high powered women who have burned paths through and sometimes been burned by their worlds and the men in them. It is the week between Christmas and New Year s, and ten high achieving ladies are gathered at the expensive Castle Spa, seeking to rejuvenate themselves with Botox, aromatherapy, and all around pampering. They lounge around in the Jacuzzi, sipping champagne, and telling each other the stories of their lives. The Trophy Wife recounts her spell in a Greek prison; the Brain Surgeon tells of twins and mistaken identity; the Judge describes a sex change that allowed him to judge the pleasures of the bedroom from both male and female perspectives; and the Stepmother remembers her unforgettable story, a reversal of Cinderella s, with the stepmother fated to play the victim. The Spa is a darkly funny sketch of a group of women who, despite prejudice, imprisonment, domestic catastrophes and romantic debacles, have risen to the top of their respective worlds.

The Stepmother’s Diary

‘I read my daughter’s diaries the other day. Let me share with you. You may think you know pretty much what’s going on in your own family. Believe me, you do not’. Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn’t considered his daughter, Isobel. She is a delightful, charming girl who spends her school holidays caring for the elderly and is the apple of Gavin’s eye. Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It’s not easy, but no one had promised it would be. Sappho perseveres. But she has a history, and the history works against her. When it becomes clear that, contrary to popular belief, it is Isobel who steals Gavin’s love and attention, and Sappho who must fight for his affection, Sappho is at a loss. How can she win her husband back? With warmth, wit and her unique insights into the workings of the female mind, Fay Weldon has written a brilliant, unsettling new novel about family life today.

Chalcot Crescent

Its 2013 and 80 year old Frances is sitting on the stairs of number three Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, listening to the debt collectors pounding on her front door. World history has finally reached her doorstep!

Moon over Minneapolis

A collection of stories featuring women who must make difficult choices includes ”Subject to Diary” and ”Pumpkin Pie.” By the author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil.Tour.

Wicked Women

Via 20 madcap tales, Fay Weldon takes readers into a world peopled with therapists who blithely destroy marriages and family ties, husbands and lovers whose greatest cruelty is their indifference, and clever women navigating the perils of domesticity. Her wicked humor and seasoned wisdom are as evident here as always and tempered by great compassion for the foibles of the human heart.

A Hard Time To Be A Father

Fay Weldon won the Silver Pen Award for her last collection of stories, Wicked Women. Here are nineteen sparkling new tales about the way we live now, as lovers, partners, children, parents. Or alone. Stories of passion, desire and necessary restraint; of the near future, the recent past; of old habits, new technology; of won’t be mothers and would be fathers; of houses ancient and modern. Stories, in fact, to enlighten us to the true and timeless nature of the human condition, in this new age of self knowledge.

Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide

A spiky, feisty, hilarious collection of stories that expose women’s clumsy, often doomed, attempts to negotiate a smooth path through life. Abandoned wives remain as lingering presences in the homes of their ex husband’s new girlfriends; beautiful young models find their misdemeanours exposed for all the world to see in the tabloids; middle aged women get swept off their feet and into the criminal underworld by charismatic con men; young trophy wives get thrown in jail after over exuberant cavorting on their private yachts; mothers beg their thirty something career minded daughters to freeze their eggs in the hope that they may one day bear their grandchildren. Bold, glamorous, sexy, unrepentant, Fay Weldon’s hero*ines offer a quite unique view of the world as they face their trials without fear or trepidation. Both her legions of existing fans and new readers will be enthralled.

Letters to Alice

Alice is an eighteen year old student and aspiring novelist with green spiky hair, a child of the modern age who recoils at the idea of reading Jane Austen. In a sequence of letters reminiscent of Jane Austen’s to her own neice, ‘aunt’ Fay examines the rewards of such study. Not only is her correspondence a revealing tribute to a great writer it is also an original and rewarding exploration of the craft of fiction itself.

Auto da Fay

From life as a poor unwed mother in London to becoming one of England’s bestselling authors and most popular exports, Fay Weldon has crammed more than most into her years. Wife, lover, playwright, novelist, feminist, antifeminist, winer and diner Fay leads us through her peripatetic life with barely a role she can t illuminate. Born Franklin Birkinshaw in 1931, Fay spent most of her youth in New Zealand. With her glamorous father, a philandering doctor, generally absent, Fay s intrepid mother and bohemian grandmother raised her along with her sister, Jane. Brought up among women, Fay found men a mystery until the swinging sixties in London where she gradually became a central figure among the writers, artists, and thinkers. She has maintained this unique position through four turbulent decades. At first, she managed to scrape along, penning winning advertising slogans, before she began to write fiction. As this memoir comes to a close, we witness the stirring of her first novel. Riddled with Weldon s customarily fierce opinions, this frank and absorbing memoir is vintage Fay. An icon to many, a thorn in the flesh to others, she has never failed to excite, madden, or interest. With this engaging autobiography, she has finally decided to turn her authorial wit and keen eye on…
herself.

What Makes Women Happy

With inimitable wit and insight, this encouraging tome humorously leaps into What Makes Women Happy and what women can do to lead more rounded and balanced lives. Women can learn how to tackle anxiety, envy, guilt, and other sources of female stress, while giving in to indulgences and desires like sex, food, friends, family, shopping, and chocolate. Chapters contain sassy morals, illustrative and sympathetic stories, and a lot of frank advice to show women how to stop obssessing and feeling bad about themselves. Later chapters confront the four horses of a woman’s apocalypse: despair, depression, isolation, and self doubt.