Auto Da Fay
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- 8,49 €
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- 8,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
The one and only Fay Weldon tells the story of her turbulent and controversial life.
From the 1930s to the 2000s, Fay Weldon has seen and lived our times. As a child in New Zealand, young and poor in London, unmarried mother, 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 not a few Very Famous Names.
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.
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Reviews
‘Wonderfully fluent and entertaining…studded with her trademark gems of crisp observations…you can’t put this terrific book down. You can always trust Fay to be provocative – and this time she excels herself.’ Daily Mail
‘Engrossing and entertaining. This is the sort of book stuffed full of things that you hope are made up but fear are true.’ Observer
‘One of the most prolific, entertaining and provocative of contemporary women writers has sought to make retrospective sense of the muddle and unexpectedness of life. Like her novels, the surface sparkles along merrily enough but there are darker currents beneath.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘It is an astonishing story lightly and deftly told. It will delight Weldon's many fans. Gripping.’ Daily Telegraph
‘The rich, fruity haphazardness of her experience will startle and amaze…as they say, you couldn’t make it up.’ Sunday Times
‘Hilarious…entertaining…compelling…“Auto da Fay” is just like its author: big, blousy and sometimes hard to believe. In the end, though, they both demand our respect.’ Independent on Sunday
About the author
Fay Weldon is a novelist, screenwriter and cultural journalist. Her novels include ‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’, ‘Puffball’, ‘Big Women’ and ‘Rhode Island Blues’. Her most recent novel was the critically acclaimed ‘She May Not Leave’. She lives in Dorset.
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. Photos.
