Fay Weldon
Novels


Leader of the Band Viking First American Edition, 1989 First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, 1988
From the book jacket: Wicked, irreverent, and utterly charming, Leader of the Band introduces a heroine unabashedly devoted to her own desires. Starlady Sandra, discoverer of the planet Athena, television astronomer, and wife to a humorless barrister, runs off with the leader of the band. He is Jack the sax player, so provocative that it's into the bushes and off with her slinky white dress between sets. Love at first sex, and Sandra decides to give up everything to follow Jack and his caravan of motley musicians to France - deserting husband, job, responsibility, and all those fans of her late-night astronomy show. Leader of the Band is both a picaresque adventure and an acerbic meditation on marital relations; the appeal of love or the appeal of money; the nature of adolescence (in a teenager or a forty-year old); and the quest for fulfillment. Every subject is twisted in delightful ways by Fay Weldon's exuberant wit and wisdom, and - for a while, at least - the message is, you can have it all … if you are not shy about stealing some of it, and if you are willing to make a few sacrifices along the way. Weldon here creates an audaciously selfish heroine whose unfettered whims lead to a raucous reshuffling of the cards of human morals and mores. Bio from the book jacket: Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in an all-female household in New Zealand, and received an M.A. in economics and psychology from St. Andrew's University in Scotland. She began by writing film scripts and plays, then turned to fiction. She is the author of The Hearts and Lives of Men, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, , The Shrapnel Academy, Puffball, Praxis, and many other novels. She lives in London and in Somerset with her husband and two of her four sons.

Leader of the Band
Viking
First American Edition, 1989
First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, 1988

From the book jacket:
Wicked, irreverent, and utterly charming, Leader of the Band introduces a heroine unabashedly devoted to her own desires. Starlady Sandra, discoverer of the planet Athena, television astronomer, and wife to a humorless barrister, runs off with the leader of the band. He is Jack the sax player, so provocative that it's into the bushes and off with her slinky white dress between sets. Love at first sex, and Sandra decides to give up everything to follow Jack and his caravan of motley musicians to France - deserting husband, job, responsibility, and all those fans of her late-night astronomy show.
Leader of the Band is both a picaresque adventure and an acerbic meditation on marital relations; the appeal of love or the appeal of money; the nature of adolescence (in a teenager or a forty-year old); and the quest for fulfillment. Every subject is twisted in delightful ways by Fay Weldon's exuberant wit and wisdom, and - for a while, at least - the message is, you can have it all … if you are not shy about stealing some of it, and if you are willing to make a few sacrifices along the way.
Weldon here creates an audaciously selfish heroine whose unfettered whims lead to a raucous reshuffling of the cards of human morals and mores.
Bio from the book jacket:
Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in an all-female household in New Zealand, and received an M.A. in economics and psychology from St. Andrew's University in Scotland. She began by writing film scripts and plays, then turned to fiction. She is the author of The Hearts and Lives of Men, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, , The Shrapnel Academy, Puffball, Praxis, and many other novels. She lives in London and in Somerset with her husband and two of her four sons.

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Fay Weldon Novels

Fay Weldon
Novels