Auto da Fay: A Memoir

Description

An autobiography from a wickedly funny writer who never fails to amuse Fay Weldon, one of England's best selling and most celebrated authors, looks back on her life as wife, lover, playwright, novelist, feminist, antifeminist, and bon vivant in this frank and funny memoir. Born Franklin Birkinshaw in 1931, Fay spent her youth in New Zealand with her sister, mother, and grandmother before moving to England. Later Fay had to scrape by as an unwed mother in London, trying marriage, then advertising, and then writing on her own. She closes her memoir as she drops what will be her first success, a television play, into a mailbox on her way to the hospital to give birth. Riddled with Weldon's customarily fierce opinions, this frank and absorbing memoir is vintage Fay. An icon to many, a thorn in the flesh to others, she has never failed to excite, madden, or interest. With this engaging autobiography, she has finally decided to turn her authorial wit and keen eye on herself.

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Customer Reviews

Sheer delight
Auto Da Fay is about as good as autobiography gets. Fay Weldon has a wonderful zest for life and a larger than life-size personality that comes through on every page. It's the sort of book that cheers you up and restores your faith in human nature.

A Good Boy Tomorrow: Memoirs of A Fundamentalist Upbringing
Basic Flying Instruction: A Comprehensive Introduction to Western Philosophy

2008-01-29 (Kempsford, United Kingdom) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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An Utterly Delightful Autobiography
Fay Weldon is the author of twenty-four novels, five short story collections, two children's books, four works of nonfiction, several plays, and now AUTO DA FAY, a memoir. This delightful autobiography is imbued with the same audaciousness and perspicacity as is her other works. As a woman of deep insights she highlights the key, transcendent events of her life. On page one, titled "Pre-name", she writes, "I long for a day of judgment when the plot lines of our lives will be neatly tied, and all puzzles explained, and the meaning of events made clear. We take to fiction ... because no such thing is going to happen, and at least on the printed page we can observe beginnings, middles and ends, and can find out where morality resides." She declares that, while life moves into entropy, each individual does the best with the hand s/he is dealt.

Weldon was born in 1931 and raised in a rural New Zealand town called Napier. She was the daughter of a troubled but creative mother who, along with Fay and her sister Jane, was abandoned by Fay's father, a selfish, philandering doctor named Frank Birkinshaw. The girls attended a private parochial school and, early on, Fay displayed her dislike for authority and disdain for pomposity. "Mother Teresa was nice and motherly, and would hug you and give you sticky treats: all the others ... ruled by sarcasm and violence. I liked their names, but that was about all."

When the sisters wanted to baptize the girls, Fay's mother wouldn't allow it. She describes her parents as "... freethinkers, rationalists - humanists" and, while Jane had been christened as a Protestant, Fay had not even had that benediction to her name. This state of her soul meant that Fay was excluded from much at school and learned to enjoy her own company. She also had to learn to take care of herself and approach life's challenges with a sense of humor. She says she was the 'good' girl, always wanting to please.

Affable or not, Fay grew up in a strange milieu that was often as perplexing as it was pleasing. She attended school, made friends, and her relationship with her troubled mother was as exasperating as any normal girl finds her mother to be, even under the best of circumstances --- and these women certainly didn't have it easy. In 1946, at the end of World War II, upon the death of a relative, Fay's mother received an inheritance of ... "nine hundred pounds." This gift changed all of their lives because it allowed them to go to England. There, the schools Fay attended and the people she met offered the opportunity for her to nurture her genius for writing.

Weldon's life, at times, unfolds like the lives her heroines lead: she became pregnant and gave birth to a son; she married a man whom she thought would take care of her, but didn't want to have sex with her and insisted he be her pimp; she went to work for an ad agency and did so well that she wrote herself out of a job; and twists of fate kept her on a journey into an interesting life that keeps going on and on. Her words are but amulets of power, both here and in her other writing. She uses well her flawless sense of timing to limn her own story effectively and inspirationally. Weldon's fans will delight in visiting the places, sharing the experiences, and looking within themselves, as she does, and asking some of the same questions about life, love, work, parenting, survival and family. But Fay Weldon will deny this. She says of herself that she does not enjoy the journey inward. She does not enjoy examining 'who she is'.

But fortunately for us, she does raise 'those' deep questions; the ones we all struggle with and, fundamentally, Fay Weldon is as unconventional in her writing as she is in her life. Her honest approach to her writing reflects her observations as they regard the 'war between the sexes' and the roles people play in their relationships. This memoir ends when she is getting on with her first novel, THE FAT WOMAN'S JOKE, and the rest is, as they say, history. Enjoy!

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

2003-06-14 (New York, New York) | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 5

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Kehua

Description

A kehua is a Maori ghost - the wandering dead searching for their ancestral home. Without the proper rituals to send them on their way, kehua are forced to remain on Earth to haunt their relatives. They're not dangerous, and they even try to help the living, though it's wise not to listen to them. They tend to get things wrong...In the wake of murder and suicide, a young woman flees New Zealand, hoping to escape the past and find a new life. But the unshriven spirits of the recently departed can't rest peacefully, and are forced to emigrate with her, crossing oceans to finally settle in - of all places - Muswell Hill, London. Here their shadowy flutterings and murmured advice haunts the young woman and her female bloodline across the decades, across the generations. 'Run!' the Kehua whisper. 'Run, run, run!'

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Sacred Cows (Counterblasts Series)

Description

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The Stepmother's Diary

Description

'I read my daughter's diaries the other day. Let me share with you. You may think you know pretty much what's going on in your own family. Believe me, you do not'. Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn't considered his daughter, Isobel. She is a delightful, charming girl who spends her school holidays caring for the elderly and is the apple of Gavin's eye.Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It's not easy, but no one had promised it would be. Sappho perseveres. But she has a history, and the history works against her. When it becomes clear that, contrary to popular belief, it is Isobel who steals Gavin's love and attention, and Sappho who must fight for his affection, Sappho is at a loss. How can she win her husband back? With warmth, wit and her unique insights into the workings of the female mind, Fay Weldon has written a brilliant, unsettling new novel about family life today.

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The Life and Loves of a She Devil

Product Details

• Notes: BUY WITH Aplomb, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and waiting to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• ISBN13: 9780345323750
• Up: New

Description

This is not a book for everyone, but its admirers are vigorously enthusiastic. For example:
Rhoda Koenig in New York Magazine, who calls it ". . . a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
Or Rosalyn Drexler, who said on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, "It affords a scintillating, mindboggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasized dishing out retribution for one wrong or another."
Or Carol E. Rinzler, who wrote on The Washington Post Book World's front page, ". . . what makes this a powerfully funny and oddly powerful book is the energy of the language and of the intellect that conceived it, an energy that vibrates off the pages and that makes SHE-DEVIL as exceptional a book in the remembering as in the reading . . . . a small, mad masterpiece."

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Customer Reviews

Too bad Hollywood butchered the movie rendition
Fay Weldon was in the zone when she penned this masterpiece, and that pen of hers cuts like a knife. The movie made from this book is the worst butchering of a story I've ever been unfortunate enough to encounter. On the other hand the BBC did an excellent adaption as a mini-series by remaining quite faithful to the book. This novel could be quite dangerous in the hands of the wrong woman. :-)

2009-01-13 | Roy L. Pickering Jr. - Author of PATCHES OF GREY http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0578005816/ref=nosim/porfessionalp4-20 (NJ) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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revenge is bittersweet
Well, I saw very pleasantly surprised at the good quality. Would do business with this seller again.

2008-12-12 | TA (florida) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Very Dark Comedy: A Review For Those Who've Seen The Movie "She-Devil" starring Meryl Streep
This review is for those who've seen the movie.
This review contains SPOILERS for the book.

I was happily watching a favorite comedy, 'She Devil' starring Meryl Streep, Roseanne Barr, and Ed Bagley Jr. when suddenly something caught my eye that I'd never noticed before; "Based on the novel by Fay Weldon." Immediately, I ran out and bought the book. Because of this, my review contains references to both book and movie.

Ruth is a woman ignored her whole life, even by her own parents. She's the ugly duckling who never turned into a swan; an object of pity, not love. Ruth hates being tall; tall women get the modeling jobs, but not tall women like Ruth. Ruth Patchett is 6'2" tall, square jawed, four moles on her face, heavy boned, clumsy, ungainly, and emotional. She's also in love ... in love with Hate, and in love with her husband "bobbo", who in turn is in love with Mary Fisher, a petite and rich romance novelist. Mary Fisher lives in a converted lighthouse on the sea's edge, a romantic setting for a romantic woman in love.

Yes, Ruth burns her house down after Bob leaves and drops the kids off with him, then sets about ruining Bob's life until his short prison stay makes him realize how worthy a wife she was, with the happy hinting that life goes on and somehow they'll work it out. That's there the movie and the book part ways. The movie is a true comedy, highly worthy of a purchase for your humor library of DVD's. The book has humor in it, but the book is dark and filled with tragedy and intense self hatred manifested in every way possible.

The Ruth played by Rosanne Barr in the movie was overweight, an easily fixable condition, as was the mole she had removed from her face. The Ruth in the book is genetically ugly, not so easily fixed. Having been unloved by her own parents and kicked out of the house at age 16 so her step-father could use her room for his train sets, her self-loathing is deeply ingrained from childhood up. Her and Bobbo's marriage is pretty much arranged by his parents, whom Ruth was working for, to get Bobbo out of the house so they could go back to living in hotels as they preferred. Bobbo explains to Ruth they have an open marriage, and proceeds to tell Ruth of every affair he has, calling her his "best friend" as he shares how much love he holds for Mary Fisher. But when he finally announces he's divorcing Ruth to marry Mary, Ruth's compliance snaps.

In the book, Ruth burns her house down and drops the kids off at Mary Fisher's, then leaves them for good. She never returns for her own children, and never feels a pang of regret for doing it. Her own self hatred is too intense, her own feelings is that she was a bad mother and not worth having the children to begin with. She doesn't particularly like her children simply because they are a part of her. She sleeps with men who mean nothing to her, then finds employment at the nursing home Mary Fisher's mother, Pearl, is residing. After seeing to it that Pearl is returned to Mary Fisher's "palace by the sea" by emptying bedpans on her mattress (incontinence is not allowed at the home - this book was written in 1983, pre-Depends times)

Put on your glasses, with shades the color of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and take a good look at Ruth. Ruth herself steals money from Bobbo's accounts, using their joint fund he'd previously cleared out. Ruth finds a man who can help her change identities, and becomes first Vesta Rose, then Polly Patch, then multiple other identities. She uses every person whose life she moves through, both sexually and emotionally, both male and female, to achieve her goals. But her goal is confusing until close to the end: Ruth wants to be the one woman Bobbo wants to be married to, and have Bobbo love her, so Ruth must be Mary Fisher. Literally.

While Mary Fisher's lifestyle declines (she and Bobbo never did marry because Ruth Patchett was a "missing person" so Bobbo couldn't legally divorce her) she's forced to care for Bobbo's children during his incarceration, and for her mother. The real estate market is down; she's lost all her other houses to carrying the legal debts incurred by Bobbo, and now must sell her crumbling lighthouse below market level price. She grows old and fades, her books don't fare as well, and above all, she gets cancer. When Mary Fisher dies, she is reborn; through extensive and life threatening plastic surgeries. Her house is bought by a mysterious millionaires who's money has done quite well in the investment markets. Mary Fisher lives on.

All the blurbs call it "bright and funny". It's not. It's very dark, humorous at times, but a black look at the human condition. This isn't a book of revenge, it's a book of self-hatred so intense that it's pathological. This is a sad book, a bitter book, a book about a women who's accepted by others but not by herself. A woman who goes to dangerous and life-threatening procedures to completely alter herself into another woman's physical projection. My five stars for this book are deserved. It's a well written journey into self-imposed hell, a hell without the boundaries of shame or degradation or regret. Every word is another step. You must pick up this book and read it, for your own good. There is humor but it's very dark, and I myself would call this a horror story and align it with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I simply cannot get this absorbing book out of my mind. You want humor, watch the movie, you want tragedy, read the book. Solid 5 stars, definitely worth a purchase. Enjoy!

2008-12-09 | Schtinky (California) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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One of the few. . .
. . .novels where it's a good premise, but I actually liked the movie adaptation better.

I can believe that Ruth would indeed turn as dark and cynical and manipulative as she does in the novel.

What I have a hard time swallowing is that

1) She manages to cast aside enough of her personal inhibitions to use the means that she uses to wreak general havoc--shades of _Naked Came the Stranger_, for those of you who have read that. The movie is superior here not only because one would like to think that revenge on that scale _is_ possible without resorting to those means, but a woman who grew up thinking herself plain and not having had much luck in love is rather unlikely to hit on that as a method in any case.

2) That after all Bobbo has done to her, that she'd even _think_ of wanting him back afterward, let alone going through what she does in order to achieve that goal.

Sure, read the book, but take it with a grain of salt.

2008-04-06 (Bloomington, IN United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Forget the movie - read this book!
Many people will have seen the movie based on this book, starring Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep. I found the film reasonably entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.

So, reading this book was a pleasant surprise. It's infinitely funnier than the film and Weldon constructs her tale of revenge and retribution with a savage, hilarious wit. Be warned, however, that the story is considerably darker than the movie.

2008-01-25 (San Francisco) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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The Spa Decameron

Description

Ten high achieving ladies are gathered together in the week between Christmas and the New Year, at the expensive Castle Spa, seeking, through Botox, aromatherapy and general all round pampering, a new beginning to their lives. The Ladies lounge around in the Jacuzzi, drinking champagne and eating chocolate telling each other the stories of their lives. Starting with the Trophy wife's tale: her spell in a Greek prison has left her in serious need of a makeover; the Brain Surgeon's tale: of twins and mistaken identity; the Judge's tale: of the sex change which allowed him to judge the pleasures of the bedchamber from both male and female perspectives. The manicurist, the public speaker, the journalist, the company director, the ex vicar's wife, the screenwriter, all share their stories, ending with the stepmother's tale, a reversal of Cinderella's fate, with the stepmother as victim...Sparkling, witty, always compassionate and occasionally libidinous, Fay Weldon's new novel recalls Boccaccio's late medieval masterwork, "The Decameron". Boccaccio dedicated his book to the ladies of his time, who were forced to hide their amorous passions under a veil of discretion, while men were free to indulge theirs.

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