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Life Force
1st Flamingo 1993 edition paperback vg+ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Fay Weldon
159 books397 followersFay Weldon CBE was an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrayed contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Weldon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Weldon
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 9, 2010
I guess this isn't aimed at me; despite the great writing and spot-on observations, I found the characters just that bit too irritating.
January 18, 2019
Meh. Middle class people fucking each others husbands doesn't really excite me. I didn't care about any of them enough for it to matter.
May 25, 2012
One thing I can say about Fay Weldon is that she is a fire bug. After devouring the riotous satire The Life and Loves of a She Devil, in which a woman frees herself from her unhappy broken marriage by burning down her home, we have another lady who burns down a ghost-filled house to free herself and her friends from the past. “Life Force” weaves together the lives of 4 upper-middle class women, liberal idealists who have drifted into the boredom of middle age. The women are friendly enemies tied together by the promiscuous and enormously endowed Leslie Beck; they have all shared him and been the targets of his passionate lovemaking.
The author of this “memoir,” Nora, is the mild-mannered wife of a milquetoast book editor. She spends her afternoons at a boring secretarial job in a realtor’s office (the market was bad in the 70s too) toiling over a memoir that bares her and her friend’s more adventurous past. Through Nora and an art gallery owner, Marion, Weldon is able to skewer society, the art world, and industrialists, and most especially the unnecessarily complex relationships between men and women. The book is also about creation: artwork, writing, babies, and the fictions we spin in our own lives.
One question remains, is it better to be a woman with a man in her life or to succeed on your own? Weldon supplies a spectrum to choose from. Of Leslie’s 2 prudish wives, the 1st is married for her connections and goes crazy when she discovers his infidelities, and the 2nd, a former mistress, is married out of convenience and dies early, ignorant of his continued infidelities. 2 of the women in the quartet hide Leslie’s children in plain sight from their clueless spouses, and a 3rd has been abandoned by her husband and lives the cloistered life of a "not quite widow". The last, Marion, the only self-made single lady in the group, had to sell her baby to get ahead in the world and might as well be called a spinster since she chose career over marriage. No one wins except the purchased love child, Marion and Leslie’s son, who has money, art and possibly the physical endowment of his father… And, men, apparently size does matter. I thought you might like to know.
The author of this “memoir,” Nora, is the mild-mannered wife of a milquetoast book editor. She spends her afternoons at a boring secretarial job in a realtor’s office (the market was bad in the 70s too) toiling over a memoir that bares her and her friend’s more adventurous past. Through Nora and an art gallery owner, Marion, Weldon is able to skewer society, the art world, and industrialists, and most especially the unnecessarily complex relationships between men and women. The book is also about creation: artwork, writing, babies, and the fictions we spin in our own lives.
One question remains, is it better to be a woman with a man in her life or to succeed on your own? Weldon supplies a spectrum to choose from. Of Leslie’s 2 prudish wives, the 1st is married for her connections and goes crazy when she discovers his infidelities, and the 2nd, a former mistress, is married out of convenience and dies early, ignorant of his continued infidelities. 2 of the women in the quartet hide Leslie’s children in plain sight from their clueless spouses, and a 3rd has been abandoned by her husband and lives the cloistered life of a "not quite widow". The last, Marion, the only self-made single lady in the group, had to sell her baby to get ahead in the world and might as well be called a spinster since she chose career over marriage. No one wins except the purchased love child, Marion and Leslie’s son, who has money, art and possibly the physical endowment of his father… And, men, apparently size does matter. I thought you might like to know.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 21, 2021
Looking at the reviews already given, I seem to be in the minority in loving this book. True, it does seem to be about a group of women who don’t have enough to do in order to keep them away from doing what they ought not to do; yet I enjoy Fay Weldon’s work in general and prefer Life Force to several other of her book which I have read recently.
Is a woman better on her own, or married? And if married, is it possible to keep alive the passion which presumably existed at the start of the marriage? These are not exactly new questions, although to be fair Weldon published this book back in 1992, when the women’s movement was well underway but such questions were far from settled then, and even today they remain far without a satisfactory answer.
The advantages and pitfalls of both single and married states for women are contrasted through Marion, Nora, Rosalie and Susan and their various husbands or lovers. And then of course there’s Leslie Beck, the interloper in their midst, with his hapless wives and mission to lead these women to the ‘little death’ in the underworld of his generous masculine endowment: he is reminiscent of the Greek god Hermes, who leads souls to the underworld and is often depicted with red hair.
Passion; pleasure; the pleasure of passion. Is it possible to reconcile this with a ‘respectable’ lifestyle? It’s a question still worth asking. Read the book, and draw your own conclusions.
Is a woman better on her own, or married? And if married, is it possible to keep alive the passion which presumably existed at the start of the marriage? These are not exactly new questions, although to be fair Weldon published this book back in 1992, when the women’s movement was well underway but such questions were far from settled then, and even today they remain far without a satisfactory answer.
The advantages and pitfalls of both single and married states for women are contrasted through Marion, Nora, Rosalie and Susan and their various husbands or lovers. And then of course there’s Leslie Beck, the interloper in their midst, with his hapless wives and mission to lead these women to the ‘little death’ in the underworld of his generous masculine endowment: he is reminiscent of the Greek god Hermes, who leads souls to the underworld and is often depicted with red hair.
Passion; pleasure; the pleasure of passion. Is it possible to reconcile this with a ‘respectable’ lifestyle? It’s a question still worth asking. Read the book, and draw your own conclusions.
October 27, 2011
Fay Weldon, you have disappointed me. And so I have abandoned you halfway.
October 12, 2019
Fay Weldon - La forza vitale
Una critica alla generazione degli anni 60, forse 50. Una critica alla popolazione londinese benestante. Una critica alla mancanza di libertà e di flessibilità nei rapporti e forse più di tutto un grande monito alla stessa.
La forza vitale é un romanzo particolare, scritto in prima persona come se la scrittrice ci stesse narrando la sua storia, ma spesso mettendosi anche nei panni altrui.
É una finta autobiografia, un sogno, un tedioso, doloroso, soddisfacente, ripercorrere di passi e di passato.
L'infedeltà e l'arrivismo sono al centro di ogni cosa, così come lo é lo spirito e la debolezza umana. O lo spassionato desiderio di qualcosa che non si può avere. Tutto vortica intorno a questi temi e termina con una discesa amara in un finale che ci lascia atterriti e tristi, ma forse anche un po' vuoti.
Una critica alla generazione degli anni 60, forse 50. Una critica alla popolazione londinese benestante. Una critica alla mancanza di libertà e di flessibilità nei rapporti e forse più di tutto un grande monito alla stessa.
La forza vitale é un romanzo particolare, scritto in prima persona come se la scrittrice ci stesse narrando la sua storia, ma spesso mettendosi anche nei panni altrui.
É una finta autobiografia, un sogno, un tedioso, doloroso, soddisfacente, ripercorrere di passi e di passato.
L'infedeltà e l'arrivismo sono al centro di ogni cosa, così come lo é lo spirito e la debolezza umana. O lo spassionato desiderio di qualcosa che non si può avere. Tutto vortica intorno a questi temi e termina con una discesa amara in un finale che ci lascia atterriti e tristi, ma forse anche un po' vuoti.
July 17, 2024
2.5* because it’s Fay Weldon, who is usually so good. All her acerbic wit is on display here, but I just didn’t care about any of the silly characters, the partner swaps, the bastard children. Not recommended.
June 17, 2020
Amusing and sharp, but the narrator frequently changes which felt a bit muddled. An enjoyable read nonetheless.
March 9, 2023
Had to read it.
December 27, 2024
Slow start, pero cuando entra a contar sobre los affairs i am INVESTED. 👩🏻💻
Esas amigas una más venenosa que la anterior. No soy xchica de novelas, pero esta me atrapó. Otros 50 pesos bien gastados (por favor hace otra rebaja de fin de año bookshop te lo pido porfavorrrr🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻)
Esas amigas una más venenosa que la anterior. No soy xchica de novelas, pero esta me atrapó. Otros 50 pesos bien gastados (por favor hace otra rebaja de fin de año bookshop te lo pido porfavorrrr🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻)
September 1, 2011
Wickedly good.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews