Fay Weldon

With her inimitable wit and insight, Fay Weldon offers her wisdom on the subject of female happiness and how to achieve it.What makes women happy? Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying.In this book, Fay Weldon offers wisdom gleaned from a remarkable life, a brilliantly successful career and a fair share of trouble. She explores what makes women happy; how our lives, jobs, families, bodies, desires, morals and responsibilities affect that happiness, and what we can do to...

A distillation of our times: eleven short stories from this brilliant contemporary writer.‘Watching Me, Watching You’ was Fay Weldon’s first collection of short stories. They vary widely in theme, while remaining avowedly feminist, sometimes bitter, sometimes angry, yet always handled with wit, irony and courage. A sense of sisterhood is one of the most important qualities a woman may possess and its loss, as in one particular story, ‘Alopecia’, can bring tragedy. On the other hand, in...

A chilling tale that interweaves the post-Watergate world of American politics and the way in which our past indiscretions inevitably catch up with us.Isabel Acre’s journey through life has taken her from the Australian outback via the beds and alleys of Fleet Street and the 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-rearing mould. Suddenly, however, the past which Isabel had thought...

Fay Weldon’s first novel, a sharp and witty parable of 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 should go on a diet. Together they would fight middle-age flab and feel young again. It was the diet...

A fast-moving, elegant novel set in contemporary London in the glittery world of charity auctions, big business, high art, and more than enough money to spare.Take one wealthy businessman fresh on his second marriage to an avid, successful young woman, one artist and a portrait for sale, two women wearing Bulgari necklaces, add a touch of the supernatural, a big dose of envy, stir, and see what happens.

Be careful who you invite into the bosom of your home – she may never leave…A novel from Fay Weldon, the writer who knows women better than they know themselves.Hattie has a difficult if loving partner, Martyn, an absentee mother, Lallie, and a cynical if attentive grandmother Frances. She tries to do the right and moral thing in a tricky world, and always has. But she now has a baby, Kitty, which makes true morality rather harder to achieve. Somehow, money has to be earned. Into this household...

Weldon on top form; Weldon tackling love, sex, ageing, death; Weldon at her wittiest best; Weldon unparalleled.Sophia is a thirty-four-year-old film editor living in Soho. Her only living relation (she thinks), her grandmother Felicity, is an eighty-three-year-old widow (several times) living in smart Connecticut. Sophia is torn between her delight in her freedom and a nagging desire for the family ties that everyone else grumbles about: casual sex is all very well, but who do you spend...

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...

A novel of urban deceit and rural passion, of doctors, witches, birth and death.‘Many people dream of country cottages. Liffey dreamed for many years, and saw her dream come true one hot Sunday afternoon, in Somerset, in September… A trap closed around her. The getting of the country cottage, not the wanting – that was the trap.’Richard and Liffey, a young married couple, follow their dream of moving out of London to a country cottage in the middle of Somerset. Richard continues to live and work...

A wonderful collection on topical themes from the controversial ‘product-placement’ author of The Bulgari Connection.A superb new collection of stories: shrewd, sharp, insightful, with a cheerfully dark view of the world.The wronged wife remains a lingering presence even after the mistress has moved in to her home. Oriole, an enormously successful businesswoman married to the ineffectual Hugh, begins to re-evaluate her life, when her best crockery keeps mysteriously flying through the air. A...

A brilliant, inventive and endlessly delightful memoir from Fay Weldon, one of our most respected commentators on sex, relationships and gender, that picks up where her acclaimed Auto da Fay left off.Fay Weldon, one of our cleverest and best-loved novelists, returns to the rich material of her own eventful life in this stylish blend of memoir and fiction. Mantrapped is the continuing story of Weldon, writer, mother, daughter, sister, cook, campaigner, juggler of life, time, work and money....

A selection of lectures and essays contributed to newspapers, magazines and books over recent years, revised for this volume and all highly relevant to today.In these essays find a portrait of the times, to help us map our way through the new Garden of Eden, in which men hold the baby and women the mobile phone. The garden is timeless, its beauties are ineradicable, the angel’s blazing sword no longer bars the way – so what’s going wrong? Tricky to see the wood for the trees in this new-old...

This is the story of women when they were wimmin: of that blossoming in seventies England of hope, freedom, equality and sisterhood; and of what happened next…Big Women is the tale of Medusa, a feminist publishing house founded one balmy evening at sedate Chalcot Crescent in a flurry of argument, peace-making and naked dancing.The novel is everything and more we expect from Fay Weldon, not just a work of literature but an energising drop into the pool of social complacency – a feisty,...

The one and only Fay Weldon tells the story of her turbulent and controversial life.From the 1930s to the 2000s, Fay Weldon has seen and lived our times. As a child in New Zealand, young and poor in London, unmarried mother, wife, lover, playwright, novelist, feminist, anti-feminist, spag-bol-cook, winer-and-diner, there are few waterfronts that she hasn’t covered, few battles she hasn’t fought. An icon to many, a thorn-in-the-flesh to others, she has never failed to excite, madden, or interest....

‘Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy’ SpectatorHere are nineteen glittery 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...