Big Women

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.

Reviews

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

About the author

Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in New Zealand. Her work is translated into most world languages.