FEMALE FRIENDS

by Fay Weldon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 1974

Rub a dub dub -- ""rub and scrub distress away"" -- Chloe and Marjorie and Grace -- Grace and Marjorie and Chloe -- girls who grew up together and ""bled in unison"" -- female friends -- perhaps with a group identity ""like black beetles"" and doomed to despair, as the sparks fly. . . . Anyone who read Fay Weldon's Down Among the Women (1973) will instantly identify the theme and the technique -- shifting, alternating, backing and filling in and out with a limited constellation of fathers (mostly absent by default) and mothers (aging, dying but hanging on to the concept that you must live by ought not want) and husbands and lovers and of course Marjorie and Grace and Chloe: Marjorie who has a plain face with frizzy hair, ""one of nature's dead-ends'; Grace who is desirable and destructive, aborting all the children she conceives steadily except the one she left to Chloe to rear which was Patrick's -- the ubiquitous lover with ""a high sperm count""; and finally Chloe, of course the nicest and the most acceptant and the most maternal (not only her child by Patrick but Patrick's by Grace and two by his dead -- suicide -- wife and hers again by her husband Oliver). Yes, so it goes, single and wretched, married and miserable, rub and scrub. . . . A stronger book than the first perhaps because it is handled, craftwise, with more expertise (Weldon is most effective -- a few found her exasperating) and without a single note of aggressive discord she has managed to project the entire schema of human female bondage. Simultaneously and contradictorily, a sad and charming book which mirror-images our friends, ourselves -- all sisters under that chafed skin.

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION