Showing results by author "Fay Weldon" in All Categories

In New York Magazine, Rhoda Koenig calls The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, "...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."

As the Season of 1899 comes to an end, the world is poised on the brink of profound, irrevocable change. The Earl of Dilberne is facing serious financial concerns. The ripple effects spread to everyone in the household: Lord Robert, who has gambled unwisely on the stock market and seeks a place in the Cabinet; his unmarried children, Arthur, who keeps a courtesan, and Rosina, who keeps a parrot in her bedroom; Lord Robert's wife Isobel, who orders the affairs of the household in Belgrave Square; and Grace, the lady's maid who orders the life of her mistress.

From the award-winning novelist and writer of Upstairs Downstairs, the third book in a brilliant trilogy about what life was really like for masters and servants before the world of Downton Abbey. England, 1903. Lord Robert and Lady Isobel Dilberne and the entire grand estate, with its hundred...

As 1901 comes to an end, there is much to be grateful for: The Dilberne fortune has been restored, and the grand Dilberne Court, with its 100 rooms, has been saved. Lord Robert's son, Arthur, is happily married to Chicago heiress, Minnie, who is pregnant and trying to come to terms with her new role as lady of the manor, and her charming but controlling mother-in-law, Lady Isobel. As Lord Robert and Lady Isobel get caught up in the preparations for the coronation of Edward VII, they debate the future of their recently orphaned niece, Adela.

The witty, mischievous and supremely artful Fay Weldon announces on the first page of The Hearts and Lives of Men that she has written a love story and give away its ending - happy. It is a love story, though, with all the obstacles, both devilish and divine - a tale of innocence corrupted and selfishness reformed. Helen Lally is 22, the stunning daughter of an impoverished artist whose fame and fortune will soon be made. Woe to her for catching the eye of Clifford Wexford, a 35-year-old art dealer, rapaciously ambitious, eminently eligible and careless of all lives but his town.

Esther Wells goes on a diet and the scales fall from her eyes. Depriving themselves of fatty foods, both husband and wife have new perspectives on each other, and the process is one of slow destruction of their marriage. Esther tells in flashback, from the depths of her basement apartment in Earls Court, the history of her marital disaster - in between her consumption of chocolate cake, tinned fruit, sweet sherry and a host of other high-calorie goodies.

Raised by a mad mother and a half-mad sister, abandoned by her father, Praxis Duveen is a master of the art of survival. Her life, indeed, has been full: two marriages, unsuccessful; a brief but profitable career as a prostitute; a little dabbling in incest; a mercy killing; and an inadvertent reign as both apostle and victim of the women's movement. Buffeted and battered by life, Praxis has survived with energy and humor intact.

It’s 2013, and 80-year-old Frances (has-been writer) is sitting on the stairs of No.3 Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, listening to the debt collectors pounding on her front door. From this house she’s witnessed five decades of world history. While she waits for the bailiffs to give up and leave, Frances writes. She writes about the boyfriends she borrowed and the husband she stole from Fay, about her daughters and their children. The problem is that fact and fiction are blurring in Frances’s mind.

Joanna May is the beautiful, passive, perfect wife of nuclear entrepreneur extraordinaire, Carl May - until he discovers her with her Egyptologist lover. The lover is murdered, Joanna disgraced, the marriage dissolved. But something of their union, "a ritual performed in the presence of my beauty, his power," will not die. Piqued by a clue Carl cannot contain, the sixty-year old Joanna discovers the demonic experiment he and her gynecologist carried out thirty years ago.

Inspired by a series of instructive letters written by Austen to a novel-writing niece, Letters to Alice is an epistolary novel in which an important modern writer responds to her niece's complaint that Jane Austen is boring and irrelevant. By turns passionate and ironic, "Aunt Fay" makes Alice think - not only about books and literature, but also life and culture.

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.

In this brilliantly witty, caustic yet compassionate novel, Fay Weldon explores the lives of three friends: Majorie, Grace and Chloe, who met as children during the evacuation of wartime London. Their unusual friendship survives despite shared lovers, turbulent marriages, and clamoring children.

Liffey and Richard move from their chic London apartment to a quaint, rose-covered cottage because Liffey insists. Their neighbors, Mabs and Tucker, are delighted when Richard petulantly abandons Liffey to pursue his career in London and they set out with energetic spite to teach their city friend a lesson. Whether Liffey becomes pregnant from that lesson or by Richard remains to be seen, but Mabs believes that the baby in Liffey should rightfully be in her.

Waspish, wise, and wickedly witty, this is a collection to treasure forever. Reviewers have been describing Fay Weldon's inimitable voice for years. Now, here is Fay Weldon in her own words, selecting and introducing her favourite short stories from across her career as one of Britain's foremost contemporary novelists.

Consider Vivien in November 1922: she is 24 and a spinster. She wears fashionable clothes, but she is plain and - almost worse in those times - intelligent. At nearly six feet tall, she is known unkindly by her family as 'the giantess'. Fortunately Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant with another man's child and will die in childbirth in just a few months....

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.

In Fay Weldon's 1983 classic, The Life and Loves of a She Devil, women fought men for power and won. In 2017 men take the ultimate step to get their power back. Ruth Patchett, the original 'She Devil,' is now 84 and keen to retire. But who can take up her mantle? Enter Ruth's grandson Tyler, a confident 20-something: beautiful, resentful and unemployed. Tyler won't be satisfied until he can transition into the ultimate symbol of power and status. A woman.

Fay Weldon has been one of the most consistently successful of Britain's contemporary women's authors with a career stretching over 30 years. Her prolific output alternating between television plays and vigorous novels such as The Life and Loves of a She-Devil articulate a contemporary feminist consciousness.

Bernard Bellamy has done a deal. He has sold out to the devil, in all of its forms. In return, he is promised that all his wishes will be granted, all his desires fulfilled. One of them, young Carmen Wedmore, is proving to be quite a challenge.

Isabel Acre's journey through life has taken her from the Australian outback via the beds and alleys of Fleet Street and she seamier side of Washington high life to a comfortable home in London, a reputation as a serious journalist, and a husband in the new chore-sharing, child-reading mould. Suddenly, however, the past which Isabel had thought safely behind her becomes the sources of actual physical danger. With frightening ease, the worlds of political intrigue and murderous conspiracy intrude into the coziness of her domestic life. Whom can she trust? Man?