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. Her struggles with men and women, with mother and marriages, and most particularly, with herself, become, in Weldon's deft hands, a witty and trenchant commentary on what women want—and what they can actually get.Review"Weldon writes with elegance and drive, delivering sentences like pellets from a BB gun—wry, pithy, rapid-fire."—Newsweek "Dazzling—pointing up the mad underside of our sexual politics with a venomous accuracy for which wit is far too mild a word"—The New York Times Book Review "Weldon's most directly feminist novel … A narrative that convinces, horrifies, and entertains"—Library JournalAbout the AuthorFay Weldon was raised in a household of women in New Zealand, and produced four sons of her own, as if to balance the gender count. After taking degrees in economics and psychology at the University of Edinburgh, she survived a decade of odd jobs and hard times, then began writing film and television scripts and fiction. Among her eighteen novels and short-story collections are Trouble, Life Force, The Cloning of Joanna May, Darcy's Utopia, The Shrapnel Academy, The Life and Loves of a She-devil, Leader of the Band, Puffball, and The Heart of the Country, winner of the 1989 Los Angeles Times Fiction Award. Fay Weldon lives in London and Somerset.

A sharp and funny portrait of divorce. Splitting captures brilliantly the chaotic rhythms of a woman in crisis as it chronicles Angelica's disintegration into a handful of a "perforated" personalities. No one writes with shrewder insight about women and that ambiguous and overriding presence in their lives-men -- than Fay Weldon. This is a journey rich with her wit, wisdom, and very original narrative power. "It's always a pleasure to read a seasoned novelist in peak form; Weldon is in complete control of her material here, effortlessly shifting between laughter and tears." -- Booklist; "Splitting is a vintage Weldon brew: sharp, effervescent, easily consumed and just the sort that leaves you ready for another round." -- The Hartford Courant; "A darkly comic portrait of one woman's shattering response to divorce: the latest from an author rightly celebrated for writing witty cautionary tales about the contemporary sexual jungle." -- Kirkus Reviews.From Publishers WeeklyDivorce is one kind of split; adding an alternate personality is another. Angelica Rice experiences both sorts in this highly improper sendup of proper English society as Weldon (The Life and Loves of a She-Devil) inventively tweaks stereotypical doting wives, vengeful-goddess types, efficient office workers, saucy sexpots and?per usual?men, by giving Angelica distinct personalities corresponding to each. As a young woman, Angelica isn't entirely neurotic; after a career as a 17-year-old pop star (of "Kinky Virgin" song fame), she weds country gentleman Sir Edwin Rice. Although her well-bred neighbors conduct unseemly affairs in classic comedy-of-manners fashion, Angelica remains loyal to Sir Edwin and styles herself as the prim "Lady Rice." But when, in her 30s, her 16-year marriage founders, Lady Rice experiences the reemergence of her earthy "Angelica" self, as well as the arrival of the pragmatic "Jelly White." Lady Rice is perfectly appalled when a lusty fourth identity seduces her chauffeur, and then a fifth self?a tough guy named "Ajax"?threatens to thrash Sir Edwin. Angelica, we learn, is not so much split as "perforated"?her personalities can cooperate with or challenge each other's actions. Meanwhile, Weldon again proves herself one of a kind, a smart satirist whose playful exploration of psychology reveals society's fault lines and fractures. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour; rights: Ed Victor Ltd. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalWeldon's trademark astringent style and sardonic view of the relationships between men and women, shown to perfection in Life Force (LJ 12/91), are equally well demonstrated in this novel about a woman who goes to pieces when her marriage breaks up. When Lord Edwin Rice unjustly accuses his wife of infidelity and asks for a divorce, her personality "perforates" into four parts, consisting of Angelica, the former rock singer who, as a teenager, loved Edwin and married him; Jelly, the working girl who gets a job with Edwin's lawyer and conveniently misplaces important papers having to do with the divorce; the libertine, Angel, who leads the other three in a series of sexual escapades; and, finally, the prim and proper Lady Rice. The four learn to accommodate their often humorous differences and get on with the process of healing. Both long-time Weldon fans and new readers will enjoy this novel. Recommended for most collections.-?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, SeattleCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For fans of Downton Abbey comes a ravishing portrait of the late 19th Century family from one of Britain’s best-loved authors.Fay Weldon's new novel takes us inside the lives of an aristocratic household in the last three months of the nineteenth century. It's a time of riot and confusion, social upheaval, war abroad and shortage of money. Tea gowns are still laced with diamonds; there are still nine courses at dinner, but bankruptcy looms for the Dilbernes.Whilst the Earl, gambler and man about town, must seek a new post in government; his wife Lady Isobel's solution is to marry off their son Arthur to a wealthy heiress, and without delay. But how? It's the end of the season, and choices are few. There's Minnie O'Brien from Chigaco - rich enough, but daughter of a stockyard baron, and with a vulgar mother and dubious past. Hardly suitable...!Fay Weldon tells this tale of restraint and desire, manners and morals with wit and sympathy - if no small measur...

Your writer, in conjuring this tale of murder, adultery, incest, ghosts, redemption and remorse, takes you first to a daffodil-filled garden in Highgate, North London, where, just outside the kitchen window, something startling shimmers on the very edges of perception. Fluttering and chattering, these are our kehua - a whole multiplying flock of Maori spirits (all will be explained) goaded into wakefulness by the conversation within. Scarlet - a long-legged, skinny young woman of the new world order - has announced to Beverley - her aged grandmother - that she intends to leave home and husband for the glamorous actor, Jackson Wright - he of the vampire films. Beverley may be well on her way to her ninth decade, but she's not beyond using this intelligence to stir up a little trouble. And neither are the kehua outside the window. The sins and traumas of the past haunt us all. Call them hungry ghosts, grateful dead, dybbuks, kelpies, poltergeists, furies or kehua, we carry them...

Taking its inspiration from Jane Austen’s relationship with her niece, Letters to Alice follows eighteen-year-old Alice and her “Aunt Fay,” whose letters preach the value of great artWith the dire warning, “You must read, Alice, before it’s too late,” Fay Weldon, or “Aunt Fay,” implores her “niece” to immerse herself in the works of enduring authors. Alternating between passages from Jane Austen’s novels and accounts of her own career, Weldon reveals the connections between art and life, and charts Alice’s trajectory from unpublished writer to celebrated author, her success ultimately outstripping that of her famous “aunt.” Letters to Alice puts Austen’s works into a contemporary perspective as it explores the craft of writing fiction, the pitfalls of publishing too early, the conventions that stifle the creative impulse, and more. In paying tribute to Austen, Weldon opens an illuminating window onto reading, writing, and why literature matters.

Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty-four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and - almost worse in those times - intelligent. At nearly six foot 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's child, and will die in childbirth in just a few months... Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien's fate to the reader, along with that of London between the wars. This is a city fizzing with change, full of flat-chested flappers, shell-shocked soldiers and aristocrats clinging onto the past. Inventive, warm, playful and full of Weldon's trademark ironic edge, this is a spellbinding historical novel from one of the best novelists of our time.

Here are three great historical novels in one volume.HABITS OF THE HOUSE: Fay Weldon takes us inside an aristocratic household -- upstairs and downstairs -- in the last three months of the nineteenth century. Tea gowns are still laced with diamonds; there are still nine courses at dinner, but bankruptcy, war and social unrest loom.THE SILVER THREAD: London, 1840. A young woman boards a prison ship bound for the other side of the world. Weaving death, love and adventure, The Silver Thread is plotted like a murder mystery, but narrated with the skill and style of a literary storyteller.THE CONDUCTOR: Winter, 1941. The story of how Shostakovich and one valiant, bedraggled orchestra created a defining moment in the siege of Leningrad - the bloodiest seige in history - is a gripping testament to the life-affirming power of music.

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.

With her eye for the unending power plays between the genders, Fay Weldon chronicles two decades in the lives of three generations of women—and has a devilish good time doing it “Down among the women. What a place to be!” So begins Fay Weldon’s novel, opening onto 1950s London, where Wanda, a former radical who has left her husband, has raised her daughter Scarlet to be as tough and independent as she is. But twenty-year-old Scarlet has already had one abortion, and is about to become a single mother to the child she’ll call Byzantia. The novel also follows the lives of Scarlet’s friends: Sylvia, a born victim; respectable Jocelyn, hopelessly trapped in her dull, bourgeois existence; Audrey, who finally breaks out of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant, and doomed. Over the course of twenty years, they will discover it’s never too late to become the women they are meant to be.

From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes the story of three women's enduring friendship They first met as children in 1940s London. Thirty years later, Marjorie, Chloe, and Grace make their way through an almost unrecognizable post-war society, coping with husbands, children, parents, and the messy business of life.      Trapped by her dependency on her tormented screenwriter husband, Chloe finds a novel way of liberating herself from his sexual and domestic oppression. Marjorie, a childless BBC director, is overwhelmed with guilt upon seeing her mother, the woman who abandoned her thirty years earlier, dying in a hospital bed. And egocentric Grace, who lives with a much younger man, her husband having passed away, sacrifices the wellbeing of her son upon the altar of pleasure.  A smart, prescient novel that speaks for a generation of women struggling to find their place in a male-dominated world, Female Friends is a masterwork from a storyteller at the top of her game.

Clifford Wexford is a darling and a devil. An entrepreneur, his unique combination of charm and daring manipulates an already fraudulent art world. But manipulation of the egos and the canvasses of those surrounding him isn't his only forte. Clifford also doles out pseudo-love and misery.