Fay Weldon
Novels

In her new novel, Fay Weldon examines the lives of five adults, and of the four children that are the reuslt of their marriages to - and adulteries with - each other.

Madeleine wants revenge, to be remembered, to be loved. But don't we all? The cast-off wife and chief persecutor of Jarvis, an architect, she harbors such rage that not even death can shut her up.

Jarvis has a clean new life and a clean new wife, Lily - as unlike grubby Madeleine as she can be - and a nice new baby, Jonathan. Now the furniture is polished, there is orange juice for breakfast, and sex is fun.

Margot, the doctor's wife, Jarvis's part-time secretary, once, many years ago, on a night quite forgotten by Jarvis, made love to him on a pile of damp coats. Loved by her husband, Philip - in his way - and by her children, Margo is complacent in her life until Madeleine turns her character upside down.

On page after page of this delightful satiric novel, Fay Weldon cuts through the core of the meanings beneath everyday speech and manners, and with astonishing nerve and a lovely felicity of style, delineates the essential forces which conjoin parent and child, husband and wife, lover and lover. Her dialogue crackles with wit, and she can create a character in the round with a few brief strokes. But perhaps her most impressive attribute is that though her portraits are ostensibly malicious, with subtle artistry she forces the reader to care about the fate of every member of her cast. For its originality, elegance and piercing humor, Remember Me is a truly impressive and disturbing novel.

Bio from the book jacket:

Fay Weldon was born in England, but was brought up in New Zealand and went to St. Andrew's University in Scotland, where she studied economics and psychology. Thereafter, she had a series of "odd jobs and hard times" until the mid-sixties, when she started writing. She is the author of three novels (The Fat Woman's Joke, Down Among the Women and Female Friends) and several plays, both for the theater and television (for the latter, several of the first episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs).