Showing results by author "Fay Weldon" in All Categories

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.

This is the story of the Honourable Guinevere Dilberne, daughter of Arnold, 11th Earl of Dilberne, Sandra Sinclair and Rita Boniface. Yes, that's right. Three parents. Or, in fact, four, if you wish to count Sandra's husband Clive. Though he played little part in it. It all begins with a loving couple, their interfering neighbour, a test tube and a turkey baster. These days, anything can happen....

Fay Weldon reads from her introduction to Corinthians. A figurehead of the early Christian church, Paul sets out some of his thoughts on strife and division, spirituality, the bond of marriage and hopes for his own immortality in this book. Her introduction is preceded by a reading from the book by Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh.

They thought they were attending a benign military lecture at the illustrious Shrapnel Academy, housed in one of England's grand manors and dedicated to the memory of Henry Shrapnel, genius inventor of the cannonball. But the weekend is not peaceful. Perhaps benign militarism is always a false conceit. As a chronicler, Fay Weldon has never been more brilliant or more ruthless about the folly of human relations. The Shrapnel Academy is a devastating update of the English country house novel, as savagely funny as it is topical.

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.

There's a gathering of high-achieving ladies at the remote and expensive Castle Spa over the 10 days of Christmas and New Year. None of them have met before. Have they no homes to go to? Why have they put their lives on hold? Perhaps they think they've come to seek (through Botox, aromatherapy, and extravagant pampering) a better understanding of their lives?

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.

"It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring... except a clot of blood, creeping up from Ted's leg to his brain, to kill him as he slept..." Recently widowed Philly keeps dreaming of her dead husband Ted – strange dreams of a paranormal alternate reality: why is her new husband Robbie so interested in them? He works for a mysterious genetic research company called Portal Inc. But what exactly is Robbie's job? Did he seduce Philly by feeding her experimental new drugs? Was Ted's death intended? Such suspicions make Philly doubt her own sanity.

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....

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.

Beverley may be close to ninety, but when her granddaughter announces her plans to leave home and husband for a glamorous actor, she’s already considering how she can stir up a little trouble. And so are the kehua outside. Quite how these Maori ghosts arrived outside the kitchen window is the origin of your writer’s tale. Suffice to say that everyone is haunted by the traumas of the past, that Beverley’s female bloodline carry a weighty spiritual burden - and that murder is at the root of it all....

Eleanor Darcy, a woman of marginal genealogy and looks that play better than they should, is married to the economist to whom the Prime Minister listens. Determined to rip apart the old order and start fresh, Eleanor becomes the serpent - or angel - who whispers utopian visions in Julian Darcy's ear. With the husband in jail for imperiling the financial structure of the nation, Eleanor grants exclusive interviews to two journalists, Hugo Vansitart and Valerie Jones. Though they seem more preoccupied with each other than with their elusive subject, their goal is the same: to capture the essence of Eleanor Darcy.

How to be a reader - how to be a writer. All you need to know. Alice is an 18-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 niece, '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.

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.

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 own. In the space of nine months in the ever-so-swinging '60s, Helen and Clifford meet, fall instantly in love, marry and produce the enchanting Nell. But there the want changes hands, as it will, time and again, in the course of this seductively high-spirited move.

Praxis Duveen is a survivor. At five years old, in 1920s England, she is still innocent, the product of an unstable mother and a flighty father who abandoned Praxis and her half-crazy sister, Hypatia. As the decades fly by, Praxis experiences many incarnations. Now, from her dingy basement apartment, where she's attempting to write a memoir, Praxis tells about the story of her remarkable journey - peppered with more than a few detours along the way.

Vær forsigtig med, hvem du inviterer indenfor - måske rejser hun aldrig igen... Hattie er en fornuftig ung kvinde. Hun arbejder i bogbranchen og danner par med Martyn, som er journalist med politiske ambitioner. De er et helt igennem vellykket, ungt par med barn og eget hus i London. Det var egentlig meningen, at Hattie skulle gå hjemme med deres lille datter. Men Hattie må erkende, at der er en verden til forskel mellem tanken om et barn og virkeligheden med et barn.

In Eden Grove leben lauter glückliche Frauen. Ihre Ehemänner sind erfolgreich. Sie haben muntere Kinder und das Familienleben ist ganz harmonisch. Eden Grove ist eine friedliche kleine Welt - aber nicht für alle. Es gibt zum Beispiel die unattraktive Ruth. Gattin eines Steuerberaters und Mutter zweier Kinder. Ruth ist loyal, und sie erträgt lange die sexuellen Eskapaden ihres Mannes. Aber es kommt der Punkt, an dem Ruth die Geduld verliert. Sie dreht den Spieß um und plant einen Rachefeldzug.

Fay Weldon samler her sine yndlingsnoveller, som hun har skrevet over fire forskellige årtier: 70'erne, 80'erne, 90'erne og 00'erne. I sit eget forord reflekterer Weldon over, hvordan kvinders plads i samfundet har aendret sig over disse fire årtier, fra stadig at vaere delvist undertrykt i hjemmet i 70'erne til at vaere nødsaget til at finde arbejde i 00'erne. Indeholder også nye historier

A novel about split personality, about the components of the self and genetic engineering. It tells the fate of Joanna May, who at the age of 60 discovers that she has been cloned and there are in fact four other versions of herself in existence.