Down Among the Women

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Jag hade förväntat mig mer humor, men istället är det en ganska sorglig historia om kvinnoöden som berättas.

It made my jaw drop with it's accuracy and wicked black humour, and I became utterly addicted to Fay Weldon's books. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This is one of those books which at first seems doubly dated: the story is set in the 1950s, but it was published in the early 1970s, and in many ways it wears openly more signs of those later times than it does the former. The novel follows a group of 'friends' as they grow into women, amidst the patriarchal structure of post-war British society.Follow Wanda, the tough 1930s radical, her daughter Scarlet, unmarried, pregnant and frightened, and Scarlet's friends -- born victims, snobs, obsessive lovers -- in their absurd, nightmarish, often hilariously awful liaisons.

Scarlet, on the other hand, simply wants to have a nice time in life -- hence her adoption of a constant stream of casual male partners -- but she’s starved for true affection at home. It’s a wry, smart, darkly funny book, and there are occasional glimpses of an early 70s hipsterism in the style that I sometimes found grating.

I think perhaps because at this time of my life, this sentence completely resonated: "There is nothing more glorious than to be a young girl, and there is nothing worse than to have been one.

Samtliga påverkade av ett samhälle där kvinnans roll var starkt begränsad och förväntningarna var tydliga. There’s Helen, who begins as a model working with artists known only as X and Y; an affair with X soon turns into a far more complicated sort of menage a trois. Gradually the plot moves away from Scarlet and through these lives and others, spiralling outwards until certain parallels emerge between all these lives: the sense of male-female relationships as a series of inevitable and painful compromises, both romantic and financial, and the ever-present twin threats of violence and poverty which keep women in their place. I had no motivation to pick it up and find out what happened, nearly DNF, the ending picked up a little bit but overall was a chore to read.Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. These women can only try to survive; and then, look with hope at the new generations, raised differently from how their mothers had raised them, destined to break with many of the patterns that had stifled them - once they all land in the tumultuous 1960s.

Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. They are at least reading copies, complete and in reasonable condition, but usually secondhand; frequently they are superior examples. This book, or any of her books, may not be agreeable to the palate of younger women, but for my generation who slogged through feminism in the 60's and 70's with little progress in some areas (equal pay for equal work for example) and have seen much of what we fought for overturned these days: the frustration with the male species and their need to dominate will ring true. Fogli ben conservati, saldi e privi di sgualciture da lettura, tonalità ossidate vintage, tagli bruniti dalla luce.All of them tried to follow some sort of feminine ideal and great unhappiness resulted from squelching their own desires. Brossura paperbacks con copertina morbida plastificata, segnata da appesantimento dei toni, leggermente ripiegate le punte, buono lo stato generale.