What do you think?
Rate this book
Closing - FAIRBAIRNS
The story of four women who went on a sales training course, and the men they left behind. Spare Rib magazine described it as "a subtly feminist version of the power-sex-and-money sagas... highly enjoyable." Fay Weldon wrote in Books "Such a pleasure to read, such fun, so intelligent, so perspicacious, so well-plotted, so unobtrusively moral, so elating, I find myself in danger of writing an extended quote rather than a proper review."
482 pages, Paperback
Published April 14, 1988
11 people want to read
About the author
Zoë Fairbairns
22 books15 followersZoe Fairbairns was born in England on 20 December 1948, and educated at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and the College of William and Mary, USA. She has worked as a freelance journalist and a creative writing tutor, and is the former poetry editor of Spare Rib. She has also held appointments as Writer in Residence at Bromley Schools (1981-3 and 1985-9), Deakin University, Geelong, Australia (1983), Sunderland Polytechnic (1983-5) and Surrey County Council (1989).
Her first novel, Live as Family, written when she was seventeen, was published in 1968, and her second, Down: An Explanation (1969), was published a year later while she was still at university. Both novels employ a first-person narrative to explore issues of personal and community responsibility. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies, including Tales I Tell My Mother: A Collection of Feminist Short Stories (1978) and Brilliant Careers (2000). She has also contributed to poetry anthologies, including The Faber Book of Blue Verse (1990). In the 1970s her writing centred on environmental and social concerns, and she produced reports for CND and Shelter. In 1984, with James Cameron, she published Peace Moves: Nuclear Protest in the 1980s, an account of the anti-nuclear protest movement.
Benefits (1979), a tense, dystopian novel, marked her return to fiction and to women's issues, and five further novels, which consolidated her reputation as a feminist writer, followed: Stand we at Last (1983), spans 120 years and three continents and chronicles the lives of five generations of women against a background of Victorian repression, prostitution, the suffragette movement, the devastation of war and the rise of the women's movement; Here Today (1984), which was awarded the 1985 Fawcett Society Book Prize, is an exploration of feminist themes in a crime setting; Closing (1987), is a sharp portrait of working women caught between feminisim and Thatcherism; and Daddy's Girls (1992), is a saga of three sisters in a family full of guilty secrets. Zoe Fairbairns' most recent novel, Other Names, was published in 1998. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, How Do You Pronounce Nulliparous? (2004).
From the author's website:
Born:
England, 1948.
Family:
Second of three daughters.
Parents:
Conscientious. Furious. Funny. Gave great parties. Had huge rows. Got divorced.
Religion:
Born with an open mind. Christened into Church of England. Educated by Catholic nuns. (Don’t ask. Or Click here) Secularist.
Employment status? (Employed full-time, employed part-time, unemployed, self-employed, retired?)
All of the above.
Blog, Twitter, Facebook?
None of the above. But I welcome friendly, interesting, emails from friendly, interesting people, and I do my best to reply in kind.
Contact her at: zoe@zoefairbairns.co.uk
Her first novel, Live as Family, written when she was seventeen, was published in 1968, and her second, Down: An Explanation (1969), was published a year later while she was still at university. Both novels employ a first-person narrative to explore issues of personal and community responsibility. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies, including Tales I Tell My Mother: A Collection of Feminist Short Stories (1978) and Brilliant Careers (2000). She has also contributed to poetry anthologies, including The Faber Book of Blue Verse (1990). In the 1970s her writing centred on environmental and social concerns, and she produced reports for CND and Shelter. In 1984, with James Cameron, she published Peace Moves: Nuclear Protest in the 1980s, an account of the anti-nuclear protest movement.
Benefits (1979), a tense, dystopian novel, marked her return to fiction and to women's issues, and five further novels, which consolidated her reputation as a feminist writer, followed: Stand we at Last (1983), spans 120 years and three continents and chronicles the lives of five generations of women against a background of Victorian repression, prostitution, the suffragette movement, the devastation of war and the rise of the women's movement; Here Today (1984), which was awarded the 1985 Fawcett Society Book Prize, is an exploration of feminist themes in a crime setting; Closing (1987), is a sharp portrait of working women caught between feminisim and Thatcherism; and Daddy's Girls (1992), is a saga of three sisters in a family full of guilty secrets. Zoe Fairbairns' most recent novel, Other Names, was published in 1998. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, How Do You Pronounce Nulliparous? (2004).
From the author's website:
Born:
England, 1948.
Family:
Second of three daughters.
Parents:
Conscientious. Furious. Funny. Gave great parties. Had huge rows. Got divorced.
Religion:
Born with an open mind. Christened into Church of England. Educated by Catholic nuns. (Don’t ask. Or Click here) Secularist.
Employment status? (Employed full-time, employed part-time, unemployed, self-employed, retired?)
All of the above.
Blog, Twitter, Facebook?
None of the above. But I welcome friendly, interesting, emails from friendly, interesting people, and I do my best to reply in kind.
Contact her at: zoe@zoefairbairns.co.uk
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 11, 2021
Read this before I started working in business, to get a flavor of what it entailed in real life for a woman. Not very inspiring. Business oriented though.
May 28, 2012
In 1990 I was transitioning from running a nonprofit energy group to owning a for profit construction business. I was confident in most things, but not the mechanics of sales. I found this book in the remainder bin and was thrilled it combined business and fiction (information and a plot!)
There was a line that summarized the entire sales process. -- you want it; I have it; you can have it. It remains the foundation of what I do.
There was a line that summarized the entire sales process. -- you want it; I have it; you can have it. It remains the foundation of what I do.
July 30, 2011
Reasonably good read, though the author's feminist politics can sometimes get in the way of the plot. I liked the story of the 'cult' who get involved in making the dolls (where does she think up these ideas?), though even this one gets mired in what appeared to be a bit of token lesbianism towards the end.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews