Weldon Fay Скачать все книги 15 Количество книг

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 lead more rounded and desirable lives. As she delivers the verdicts, she also delivers short stories, or perhaps parables, to prove her points. To be good, she concludes, is to be happy, to be happy is to be good. The Victorians had it right.A blend of philosophy, storytelling and self-help, this inspirational work shows Weldon at the peak of her creative powers, brisk, stylish and entertaining.

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 ‘Threnody’, a women’s commune can be gently mocked, and the failings of the leading characters are human rather than masculine.Fay Weldon’s observation is always wonderfully acute and ‘Watching Me, Watching You’ is dominated throughout by her humour and intensity of purpose, giving to these stories a marvellous strength and unity.

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 safely behind her becomes the source of actual physical danger. With frightening ease, the worlds of political intrigue and murderous conspiracy intrude into the cosiness of her domestic life. Whom can she trust? Man? When she reveals to her husband that she long ago had an affair with a young American senator, a man who is now challenging for the Presidential nomination itself, and that her son is the love-child of that affair, even she cannot foresee the consequences. Love got her into the predicament in which she finds herself; but can love now get her out of it?

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 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.

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 comes Agnieszka, from Poland, a domestic paragon. But is she friend or foe? And even if she is foe, and seems likely to bring the domestic world crashing down around their ears, can they afford to let her go? Well, no.Martyn works for a political magazine, Hattie for a literary agency. At work, too, integrity is suffering as the need for compromise becomes ever more pressing. And always in the background is Frances, tracing the family and social history. And not just family and society but the dwelling houses too; and all those girls and women (the au pairs, the child-minders, the cleaners) who've made Hattie what she is. Not to forget that hefty dollop of male genes which has also played its part – for Hattie's is a lively and none too respectable background – and now, finally, Agnieszka, come to claim her rightful heritage – which is, let's face it, everything. Will Hattie go to the wall? And poor little Kitty…Or will rescue come?

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 Christmas with? Her current bed-mate seems to be in love with a glamorous Hollywood film star (not that Sophia cares, of course: she’s a New Woman); her mad mother is dead. All she has is Felicity.But Felicity is not your average granny. Temperamental, sophisticated, chic (and alarmingly eccentric), she has seen much of life, love and sex and is totally prepared to see more. Even if it is from a twilight home (The Golden Bowl Complex for Creative Retirement)…Twilight is not at all Felicity’s idea of fun; and quite possibly she has more idea of fun than her granddaughter.As the two women’s stories unravel, the past rears up with all its grimness and irony; but points the way to a future that may redeem them both.

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 in London, coming to stay with Liffey only on weekends.Pregnant Liffey feels burdened, hampered, at the mercy of these biological impulses beyond her control.Then there are the odd neighbours, the Tuckers, to reckon with, and the looming shadow of Bella, Richard’s lover in London, threatening the rural idyll Liffey had for so long imagined.With wit and wisdom, Fay Weldon paints a funny and shocking picture of the conflicts within these seemingly conventional lives, conflicts which seem inevitably to stem from the eternal struggle between male and female.

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.

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. Weldon has been rich and poor, sad and happy, and throughout it all, well and truly mantrapped – but does not regret it 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 books. True to her word, in Mantrapped we get Fay Weldon at her most charismatic, perceptive and entertaining.

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 land, hard to find a Third Way through: let this collection point the way.From the changing face of government, the feminisation of politics, the stamping of the warrior foot, to whence and whither Feminism, via the dangerous new cult of Therapism, to our turbulent and benighted Royals, brushing up against the famous (Roseanne, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jean Paul Gaultier) on the way – it’s all here. Plus a rare glimpse of the author’s life and loves.

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. Her life and times cover love, sex, babies, blokes, poverty, work, politics, and not a few Very Famous Names.Moving from New Zealand to London to Scotland, from the UK to points east and west, Weldon has sipped, gulped, and sometimes spat out the things that make us what we are today.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

‘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 of the human condition in this the new age of self-knowledge.

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, no-holds-barred portrait of four women’s attempts and failures to create a new life. There’s Layla, noisy, darlingish, high-profile. Alice, the academic, the philosopher, the – eventually – Glastonbury witch. Nancy: boring, sensible Nancy, the only one with any business nous. And Stephanie, the one who leaves her husband and children to embrace politics, men, other women… Their stories are intertwined with twenty years of all our lives – blissful, rage-filled, treacherous, redemptive.

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 sculptor finds love while protecting a Roman graveyard from property developers. A Christmas gathering turns murderous for one unhappy guest. A travel writer watches, horrified, as her father runs of with her best friend, but is soon planning revenge.The entire collection is shot through with Weldon's trademark mischievous deceitfulness, her hidden meanings and agendas. Rich, mad, greedy, deceitful, vulnerable her characters may be, but the stories maintain a defiantly optimistic air and sparkle with the irrepressible wit with which Weldon writes about the lives of modern men and women.