Auto da Fay - Hardcover

Fay Weldon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000710992X ISBN 13: 9780007109920

Publisher: Flamingo, 2002

Synopsis

The one and only Fay Weldon tells the story of her turbulent and controversial life From the 1930s to the 1990s, Fay Weldon has seen and lived our times. As a child in New Zealand, as young and poor in London, as unmarried mother, as 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 Very Famous Names. The reader might feel inadequate, but will never be bored! 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.

About this title

About the Author

Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in New Zealand. She took degrees in Economics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and after a decade of odd jobs and hard times began writing fiction. She is now well known as novelist, screenwriter and cultural journalist.

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who think Weldon's provocatively clever fiction (The Bulgari Connection; Wicked Women; etc.) is also highly improbable need only pick up this frank, irreverent memoir to discover her own life has been far more strange and dramatic than any novel could credibly convey. All the characteristics of Weldon's fiction-stinging wit, jaunty prose, memorable bon mots-are present in this kaleidoscopic peregrination through six decades of picaresque adventures. The racy narrative begins with older generations of Weldon's family and continues with Weldon, her mother and her sister. Her family history on both sides is eccentric and troubled. Fay was christened Franklin when she was born in 1931 in England, where her mother had fled temporarily, leaving her adulterous husband in New Zealand. Eventually she took Fay and her older sister back to Christchurch, but the reconciliation didn't work, and they returned to England for Fay's secondary and college education. She was always drawn to the wrong men, risky behavior, chronic impecuniousness and even promiscuity. In addition to being routinely victimized by men, the women in Weldon's family were susceptible to seeing ghosts and succumbing to emotional breakdowns. How Weldon made her way as a poor unwed mother (in the 1950s, she lived in a house without heat, water or an indoor bathroom) through several bizarre relationships into a job as an advertising copywriter, is a riveting story; the book closes as she's beginning a career as a TV scriptwriter. This memoir will be read by some for the real "dirt" on a popular novelist, but it will last longer as a reflection of a time when feminism had not yet released women from the careless perfidy of feckless men.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 000710992X
• ISBN 13: 9780007109920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 366