Chalcot Crescent - Hardcover

Fay Weldon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848872682 ISBN 13: 9781848872684

Publisher: Corvus, 2009

Synopsis

Fay Weldon in top gear: a wickedly sharp, history-bending, cosmos-colliding novel that tells the story of Frances, Fay's never-born younger sister. Its 2013 and eighty-year-old Frances (part-time copywriter, has-been writer, one-time national treasure) is sitting on the stairs of Number 3, Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, listening to the debt collectors pounding on her front door. From this house she's witnessed five decades of world history - the fall of communism, the death of capitalism - and now, with the bailiffs, world history has finally reached her doorstep. While she waits for the bailiffs to give up and leave, Frances writes (not that she has an agent any more, or that her books are still published, or even that there are any publishers left). She writes about the boyfriends she borrowed and the husband she stole from Fay, about her daughters and their children. She writes about the Shock, the Crunch, the Squeeze, the Recovery, the Fall, the Crisis and the Bite, about NUG the National Unity Government, about ration books, powercuts, National Meat Loaf (suitable for vegetarians) and the new Neighbourhood Watch. She writes about family secrets...The problem is that fact and fiction are blurring in Frances' mind. Is it her writer's imagination, or is it just old age, or plain paranoia? Are her grandchildren really plotting a terrorist coup upstairs? Are faceless assassins trying to kill her younger daughter? Should she worry that her son in law is an incipient megalomaniac being groomed for NUG's highest office? What on earth can NUG have against vegetarians? And just what makes National Meat Loaf so tasty?

About this title

About the Author

Fay Weldon was brought up in New Zealand. Creator of the slogan 'Go to work on an egg', writer of the first ever episode of Upstairs Downstairs and current Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Fay is best known for her novels Praxis, Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Worst Fears. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE. She lives in Dorset with her husband, the poet Nick Fox.

From Booklist

Weldon’s twenty-ninth novel creates a history for her real-life stillborn sister, calling her Frances and placing her in 2013 London, where the recession has turned the once-thriving city into an Orwellian dictatorship. This alternate universe is ruled by the National Unity Government. The state controls everything: politicians have been replaced by sociologists, food is rationed, and everything is monitored by CCTV. Frances Weldon, once a rich and successful novelist, spends much of the story huddled on the stairs of her home in Chalcot Crescent, hiding from debt collectors. Frances uses her perch to fill in the story, an 80-year adventure of family drama, speculation, and confession, with occasional philosophical asides on aging, fate, biology, and the nature of fiction. Frances discovers her family’s involvement in a planned overthrow of the government, casting an additional shadow on her circumstances. But plot is not the driving force here. What makes this novel succeed is Weldon herself, Fay that is. Her prose is observant, clever, witty, and thought-provoking despite its bleak framework—a heavy subject made palatable, even engaging, because Fay Weldon does the telling. --Carol Gladstein

Edition details

• Publisher: Corvus
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848872682
• ISBN 13: 9781848872684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288