The President's Child

by Fay Weldon

A chilling tale that interweaves the post-Watergate world of American politics and the way in which our past indiscretions inevitably catch up with us.


Isabel Acre’s journey through life has taken her from the Australian outback via the beds and alleys of Fleet Street and the seamier side of Washington high life to a comfortable home in London, a reputation as a serious journalist, and a husband in the new chore-sharing, child-rearing mould. Suddenly, however, the past which Isabel had thought safely behind her becomes the source of actual physical danger. With frightening ease, the worlds of political intrigue and murderous conspiracy intrude into the cosiness of her domestic life. Whom can she trust? Man? When she reveals to her husband that she long ago had an affair with a young American senator, a man who is now challenging for the Presidential nomination itself, and that her son is the love-child of that affair, even she cannot foresee the consequences. Love got her into the predicament in which she finds herself; but can love now get her out of it?

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Contemporary

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Fay 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

Reviews

[Inger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dejlig bog! Velskrevet.

[Cecilie Jøhnk · Rating 3 out of 5]

THis book gained much more relevance as I just read (in Owen Jones) about British police officers actually infiltrating anti-fascist movements by dating - even marrying, even having kids with - women of that movement or environment. In real life, as one says. In real life.

[Jane Glaister · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a fun read.

[Malcolm Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was at the top of a pile, a random choice over the Christmas period. Weldon is one of many authors who I hear their books being subjects for discussion much more than their books being read, though from memory the television adaptations of her books fitted the times they were broadcast in, the 1980's, perfectly.

This novel starts in greater London suburbia, where the picture is of material comfort and keeping to tight schedules pretending to be collectively normal. One woman and child are different. But it is hard to tell how different they are because it is hard to separate their narrative out from the narrative of collective reaction from the suburb they live in.

The plot is interesting, if exceptional and seemingly unlikely. A young married woman in suburbia says that she had sex with a candidate in an American election. He is a character built in the John F. Kennedy mode, to to project confidence from his last pore through the cameras to the public, whilst also appearing to be chaste and wholesome. Did the young woman once have a fling with the candidate? If she did how did it happen? This is where the plot takes on Dr Who levels of unlikely but true coincidences, all of which reinforce each other.

Before she was decanted into a life a depressed housewife and mother of a young child she was a journalist who went to America as a journalist. The American candidate, for whom being being ferried about and made to smile constantly whilst being filmed has made him compulsively horny, picked out our young English female journalist. She thinks that she is chosen for her journalism skills she did not even have to say 'Fly me I'm Isabel... '. Her brief tour through the dark heart of American political campaigning is intense. When she sees the depth of the difference between presentation and reality she is bundled away in haste, where cue more astonishing coincidences she ends up apparently married to a boring Englishman which helps disguise the origins of her being pregnant, where the mundane logic of marriage and suburban life produces dreams like the life she briefly actually did live.

How does she resolve the difference between the actual life that got her pregnant and how much what she experienced is acceptable now only as a bizarre and lurid fantasy which invites ridicule from anyone in North London listening to her claims? I am not going to answer that but I will say that lies are very powerful drugs. Propaganda is industrial strength lies and American politics was built and thrives on propaganda.

Also, as individuals we are often encouraged to lie to ourselves and other people about what counts as sex and trust, and what sex gets linked to. The world we live in is different to the America and London of 1972/3 the era depicted in this novel, but it has not improved. We make merely different mistakes to those we made fifty years ago.



to be continued

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

The entire plot revolves around the idea that the president of the United States could serve indefinitely. Should have done the research!

[Edmond Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faye, please forgive me for the choices made while I was adapting your beautiful book for a CBS TV movie.

[Sammar Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved every page of this book; once again the author keeps you glued to the pages and throws bolts of enlightenment as the story progresses.