- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo (1 July 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007291884
- ISBN-13: 978-0007291885
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 576,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy.’
Spectator
‘Weldon’s writing is seductively readable, her magic realism is never pretentious; it is understated and convincing.’
Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
Brilliant stories from the hyper-real world of Weldonia.
Brilliant stories from the hyper-real world of Weldonia, where self-deception rules; where a bully can believe he’s a victim; a blackmailer see herself as a healer; and an artist’s slave be sure she’s free.
Travel in space and time: meet Miss Jacobs, the silent psychoanalyst, who receives the confessions of saints and sinners; discover the heart of a nuclear scientist, forcibly retired, who does his hopeless best to resist the wiles of a self-seeking, talking, beautiful New Age journalist – in fact all human life is here, and still in amazingly good heart, considering.
Inside This Book
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The first (and longest at 69pp) of these short stories, The End of the Line, concern the most dislikeable set of people I have ever come across in a book and I found this quite a slog to get through, hissing through my teeth and groaning faintly as I went, although it does have the odd wonderful put-down, as here:
Alison said, "I told him I was contemplating a sex-change operation."
"Oh?" Elaine was interested, "What to, male or female?"
Tthe next story, Run and Ask Daddy If He Has Any More Money, was equally hilarious. However, it wasn't until I reached the second part of the collection, Tales of Wicked Men, that I began to relax into Fay Weldon's very abrupt and somewhat throw-away style. Perversely, it was Wasted Lives, a more conventional story set in an unknown city (which I decided might be Kiev, or perhaps Prague) that I found particularly touching, though it ended with one of Weldon's characteristic hard-bitten dismissals of the weaker one of any couple. Love Amongst the Artists, is something of a portent of what is going to happen in a relationship, rather than what is happening now, but it is none-the-worse for that.
Tales of Wicked Children, has only two stories, and it was the second one, Valediction, which told of a family who gathered at Christmas and discussed the sale of the house they had all grown up in and loved. Several people come to view the house and the parents and children are divided on whether they should sell. Finally a decision is reached by the mother and father. In another Christmas story a family falls apart - and this needs to be read carefully because it is a nine year-old child who is the hero of the day. Not all of these stories have unhappy relationships and miserable children at the centre, and it is sometimes awfully middle-class, with some of the self-satisfaction of people with good jobs and houses in nice streets and therefore quietly but tellingly very far from the majority of lives in 2012 in our increasingly unstable and uneasy world.
Alison said, "I told him I was contemplating a sex-change operation."
"Oh?" Elaine was interested, "What to, male or female?"
Tthe next story, Run and Ask Daddy If He Has Any More Money, was equally hilarious. However, it wasn't until I reached the second part of the collection, Tales of Wicked Men, that I began to relax into Fay Weldon's very abrupt and somewhat throw-away style. Perversely, it was Wasted Lives, a more conventional story set in an unknown city (which I decided might be Kiev, or perhaps Prague) that I found particularly touching, though it ended with one of Weldon's characteristic hard-bitten dismissals of the weaker one of any couple. Love Amongst the Artists, is something of a portent of what is going to happen in a relationship, rather than what is happening now, but it is none-the-worse for that.
Tales of Wicked Children, has only two stories, and it was the second one, Valediction, which told of a family who gathered at Christmas and discussed the sale of the house they had all grown up in and loved. Several people come to view the house and the parents and children are divided on whether they should sell. Finally a decision is reached by the mother and father. In another Christmas story a family falls apart - and this needs to be read carefully because it is a nine year-old child who is the hero of the day. Not all of these stories have unhappy relationships and miserable children at the centre, and it is sometimes awfully middle-class, with some of the self-satisfaction of people with good jobs and houses in nice streets and therefore quietly but tellingly very far from the majority of lives in 2012 in our increasingly unstable and uneasy world.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: Weldon's stories pull no punches. There is always
humour, and (good for forty-somethings to hear) the wry and life-hardened smiles of middle age are often set in contrast to the po-faced enthusiasms and idiocies of youth.'
NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY `Weldon's marvellous ear for the latest jargon makes her the writer new-age therapists might love to hate.'
SPECTATOR: Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy.'
IRISH INDEPENDENT: Pure Weldonian. Brimming with mischief, heavy with hidden meaning and defiantly modern, they are a parable for our times and times to come.'
SCOTSMAN: Weldon's steely, aphoristic prose spells death to cosy delusions, to liberal, civilised veneers.'
FINANCIAL TIMES: `Weldon is an enthusiastic observer of social trends and the stories are bang up-to-date. What we are being offered here is irony in its purest form.'
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: `Weldon's writing is seductively readable, her magic realism is never pretentious; it is understated and convincing.'
humour, and (good for forty-somethings to hear) the wry and life-hardened smiles of middle age are often set in contrast to the po-faced enthusiasms and idiocies of youth.'
NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY `Weldon's marvellous ear for the latest jargon makes her the writer new-age therapists might love to hate.'
SPECTATOR: Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy.'
IRISH INDEPENDENT: Pure Weldonian. Brimming with mischief, heavy with hidden meaning and defiantly modern, they are a parable for our times and times to come.'
SCOTSMAN: Weldon's steely, aphoristic prose spells death to cosy delusions, to liberal, civilised veneers.'
FINANCIAL TIMES: `Weldon is an enthusiastic observer of social trends and the stories are bang up-to-date. What we are being offered here is irony in its purest form.'
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: `Weldon's writing is seductively readable, her magic realism is never pretentious; it is understated and convincing.'
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