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Title	:	Female Friends
Author	:	Fay Weldon
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 236 pages
Published	:	May 1st 1993 by Academy Chicago Publishers (first published 1974)
Categories	:	Fiction. Literary Fiction. Novels. Literature. 20th Century. Feminism

Female Friends

Fay Weldon

Paperback | Pages: 236 pages

Rating: 3.6 | 295 Users | 17 Reviews

Ilustration To Books Female Friends

“Understand and forgive (…). Understand husbands, wives, father, mothers. Understand dog-fights above and the charity box below, understand fur-coated women and children without shoes. Understand school— Jonah, Job and the nature of the Deity; understand Hitler and the Bank of England and the behaviour of Cinderella’s sisters.”

Open-minded and generous, and sooo altruistic, isn’t it? However, if you think that Female Friends is under the sign of forgiveness and (over)understanding, you’re sorely mistaken. Neither is it about free choice, in spite of a second seductive explanation of the hallucinating events that incessantly happen to the heroines:

“… there is no such thing as an accident. We make tactless remarks because we wish to hurt, break our legs because we do not wish to walk, marry the wrong man because we cannot let ourselves be happy, board the wrong train because we would prefer not to reach the necessary destination.”

Nope, my friends, (female or not ☺), the sign that governs this extraordinary novel is self-delusion. A theme developed, on one hand, by using the jigsaw technique (you are presented with a general and schematic picture and gradually you learn the details, in a to and fro journey from the effects to causes) and on the other hand by exhausting some stereotypes gathered from almost any genre – sentimental, comic, realistic, psychological etc. – such as the conjugal triangle, the heartless mother, the debauched artist, and so on.

A development so skilfully orchestrated by a puppet-master author who knows how to dissimulate the strings that it is no wonder the result was an ambiguity of perception: some readers perceived the novel as grim, desperate and desolate, meanwhile others considered it sarcastic, parodic and immensely funny. As for me, I think oxymoronic phrases like “delightful hell” (Sara Blackburn) describe it best.

Indeed, the stories narrated are usually so despicable that border on absurd: in one of the first scenes Chloe brings breakfast to her husband in bed, and he complains about the coldness in the eyes of the maid while he bedded her the other night. She listens and dutifully picks up a girl's hair on the pillow for Oliver doesn’t like untidiness.

Her friend Grace is no better: after she lost custody of her first two children her maternal instinct seemed to die and left the third with Chloe and now is interested in none. As for Marjorie, she renounced at motherhood and sex altogether to focus only on her career.

Here we have some well-known literary clichés: the submissive wife, the beautiful bitch, the career woman, clichés that Fay Weldon, instead of avoiding, thickens until they become implausible and laughable because of the barely concealed sarcasm, the merciless irony not only of female, but also of literary stereotypes:

“How can Chloe leave? How can she carve through these patterns of dependency and hope, in the interests of something so impractical and elusive as personal happiness?”

‘I don’t care whose fault it is,’ says Grace. ’It makes me feel better. Bad behaviour is very animating, Chloe. You should try it yourself some time. One could get hooked on it. ‘

Marjorie: “I am one of nature’s dead-ends. I am a walking Black Hole. I have a hollow inside me, a bottomless pit, and you could shovel all the husbands and children in the world into me, and still it wouldn’t be filled up."

The novel is full of entangled relationships, interchangeable lovers, neglectful parents, sometimes hyped up to caricature, especially the male characters, who “follow their pricks like donkeys allegedly follow carrots.”

As for the style, Sara Blackburn sums it up pretty well:
“The narrative itself, delicately managed in many layers, is terse, clean and so witty as often to be epigrammatic. Sometimes the dialogue is telescoped into script form, a non- intrusive device which admirably matches the pace and the structure of the plotting.”

Definitely, a to-read book, black humour and all…

Details Books In Favor Of Female Friends

Original Title:	Female Friends
ISBN:	0897332903 (ISBN13: 9780897332903)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Epithetical Books Female Friends

Ratings: 3.6 From 295 Users | 17 Reviews

Judgment Epithetical Books Female Friends

Strangely believableFay Weldon had a certain perspective on the lives of women in the post WW2 era that is funny, touching, razor shirt and totally believable.

This book felt very depressing. It followed the lives of three women who have been"friends" since their youth and discusses the different choices they make into adulthood. They all settle and none of them ever seem to be truly happy. This book is definitely not a "pick me up" but it is still a decent read.

First time reading FW. Good, if a little dated in its vitriole and all the men are completely awful.

Picked up this yellowing and falling apart book for 25p, a long time since I last read Fay Weldon so thought I'd give it a try. Really quite depressing in how these women live their lives, their relationships with each other, with men and everyone else. Maybe it's because it's dated? Maybe I didn't get the humour, certainly couldn't find the 'compassion' it's billed as having - very unforgiving and negative depictions of women. Would give to my daughter to cut up for her art projects but

A book about how horrible people can be to each other and to themselves.

Not a bad book. These women all have really depressing lives. I'm not sure how the Sunday Times came to the conclusion that this book is 'Murderously funny' but it was interesting enough.

I do not know how this book came into my hands. It is a US 1st, I think from St. Martin's. This is a sad book that ends well enough. There is so much energy in the voice, despite the point of view character's marriage to a really, truly awful person. (Reading it is a good reminder of why women are more likely to seek a divorce than men. Women may expect to be supported, but they less often treat their spouse as an ornament. And it is also a comprehensive exploration of why the women's movement