A Hard Time to Be a Father: Stories - Hardcover

Weldon, Fay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582340110 ISBN 13: 9781582340111

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 1998

Synopsis

Fay Weldon won the Silver Pen Award for her last collection of stories, Wicked Women.

Here are nineteen sparkling 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 new age of self-knowledge.

About this title

From the Author

Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in New Zealand. Her novels and short stories are bestsellers around the world. Her film and television work has been accorded great critical acclaim. She lives and works in London.

From Kirkus Reviews

Nineteen new stories from Weldon (Wicked Women, etc.) that, even when fragmentary, sizzle with intellectual energy and acerbic wit. Weldon is noted for her tales of the war between the sexes, a war where victory doesnt always go to the strong or the deserving. Like a war correspondent, her dispatches from the battlefield both shock and instruct, but, as sex may be just one big cosmic joke, humor and satire often relieve the underlying bitterness. Pieces such as Percentage Trust and Inspector Remorsedescribe, respectively, a woman who coolly calculates every action in percentage terms during her affair with a man, whom she rightly doesn't trust; and a married woman and art critic who sits in church on Good Friday trying to decide whether shes a sociopath because she feels no remorse for the suicide of the wife of the artist she seduced. The wittiest story here is What the Papers Say: a successful model and a married movie star have an affair, which, when discovered, becomes headline news. Their careers are ruined, and their lives change in unsuspected ways, but by the time mitigating facts are revealed, other talesof an air crash, of a royal divorcehave risen to take their place. In the title story, a mordant modern allegory, Weldon mocks bureaucratic contemporary health care, fatherhood, pop psychology, and even feminism when a prospective father faints, sickens, and is rushed to a local emergency room upon hearing the word ``baby.'' Other standouts detail parents' scandalous behavior that fortuitously prevents an unsuitable marriage (A Great Antipodean Scandal ); a mother's contradictory admonitions that finally make sense (My Mother Said); and a haunted house exorcized by the marriage of its owner to a man who feels that he has mistreated his own house (Spirits Fly South). Some unevenness, but always bracing and full of zest. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1582340110
• ISBN 13: 9781582340111
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264