- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; TV tie-in edition edition (6 July 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006550975
- ISBN-13: 978-0006550976
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 367,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Previous reviews include:
“Weldon writes as if she were Virginia Woolf and Roseanne Arnold joined at the hip. She is literary, well-read, totally in control, sharp as a needle and off the wall.”
Mirabella
“The best woman writer in Britain.”
Woman
“Fay Weldon has talent to burn.”
New Musical Express
“Her fertility of inventions transforms the incredible into the irresistible.”
Mail on Sunday
Product Description
A major Channel 4 tie-in, 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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Using the tale of a feminist publishing house from its inception in the 1960s as a vehicle for the evolution of gender issues, Fay Weldon has written a story which will engage all readers, but will especially appeal to those who supported pro-active feminism in one way or another, and who can laugh at themselves. This is not a feminist novel, but a novel about feminism. It is candid; it is fair; but it does not treat its subject matter gently. It's a very good read.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Big Women follows the four founding sisters of a women's publishing company called Medusa (sounds a bit too much like Virago perhaps) from the birth of the company in a naked drunken dance session through to its eventual collapse as a result of some very 'unsisterly' exploitation of the family of a suicide victim. Undeniably it's a bit predictable and the characters are sometimes a bit too 'cartoon-like'. It also suffers from some of Weldon's rather irritating use of the present tense - Layla moves out Cheyne Walk; Medusa now employs a man'. But, on the plus side, its not a bad romp through some of the highs and lows of the women's movement - from free love and dungarees to power dressing senior executives with a bit of a stop over in the middle at Greenham.At the end of the day one is left wondering if it was all really worth the bother
I didn't see the Channel 4 adaptation but got the feeling when reading that the whole thing was set up for being a screenplay first and a novel second.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Yes - that's the way they were and the way we are now
30 July 2000
Format:Paperback
Mainly, I took the book out from the shelf on the library because it was in paperback and I did not want to carry some heavy hardback book along. The cover made me curious as well. Something that had been filmed could not be all that bad.
Although I've already read several of Ms. Weldon's books, this one was new to me. I find that some of her books that I've read pass above my horizon and only belong to the generation of my mother's. Well, I was in for a surprise.
Starting up in London in the early 70's: See Stephanie and Layla on their way home from putting up posters reading "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", and incidentially bump into Nancy (or rather her boyfriend Brian) who is really only visiting London. However, they part again - at least for the time being.
At a rather chaotic gathering in Stephanie's house the same evening, a publishing firm, Medusa, is founded. Meanwhile, Stephanie's husband Hamish is upstairs having sex with a not so political correct sister, Daffy. Joining the meeting as well is Zoe with her baby daughter Saffron, and Alice who is some kind of guru for the group. The meeting ends with a lot of pot and naked dancing, during which Zoe's husband Bull comes along in order to drag Zoe back to the kitchen where she belongs according to him. Stephanie rushes out of the front door - still naked - as a result of Hamish's physical exercises upstairs, leaving behind her boys Rafe and Roland.
From that moment we follow the fate of the group of women (wimmin) during the next 25 years.
This book is extremely successful in describing the climate of the 70's, Scandinavia not being very different from the UK in that respect. It gives an equally accurate description of the yuppies' society of my own time. And does so without condemning either generation. What is more, the book is really hilariously funny.
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