More from Fay, and another look at female bonding
Fay Weldon's "Mantrapped" is a curiosity, both a novel and a second volume of autobiography, presented alternately. Readers have come to expect the unconventional from this talented chronicler of what has been called "the man-woman thing." In "Mantrapped" she presents what she calls, with pointed humor, "the new Reality novel." Nancy Thayer's "The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again" is pure fiction, but the problems her characters face -- horrible in-laws -- are all too real, adding some needed emotional weight to this entertaining novel.
Weldon had always argued that fiction and autobiography were separate, she tells us. She resisted the perception that her fiction reflected her own experience: "If any of what I wrote was true I would be in prison or dead." But in recent years she has come to see the relationship between fiction and reality in a different light: "Nearly everything you write about, you realize one day, has its roots somewhere in the past."
These roots are not obvious, as readers of this book may discover, but that's one of the tricks of fiction. The novel portion of "Mantrapped" is a fanciful, satirical tale of gender confusion. Trisha, raddled, feckless, and 44 ("There are elements of me in Trish," Weldon writes), won a fortune in the lottery and ran through it all. Now she is trying to adjust to a life of penury as a part-time seamstress. When Trisha passes handsome young Peter on the narrow stairs that lead to her flat, they exchange souls. Doralee, Peter's partner, attempts to sort out the situation, providing Weldon with plenty of opportunity to comment on the contradictions of gender and the ever-changing relationship between the sexes.
The autobiography is by far the most interesting part of "Mantrapped." It picks up more or less where Weldon's comparatively conventional first volume, "Auto da Fay," left off. But then it hops around, moving back and forth in time as one memory triggers another and the author airs her thoughts on all sorts of subjects. It's a kind of literary collage that coheres into a lively and eccentric self-portrait.
Weldon traces her development as a writer, but her emphasis is on love, marriage, and motherhood. Her tone is nostalgic and rueful as she leads readers through semi-bohemian literary London in the 1950s and '60s and forward into the new age, such as it is. She doesn't dwell on the difficulty of combining writing with all her other responsibilities, and she downplays her success and her celebrity, as if to do otherwise might bring her bad luck, as perhaps she believes that it did. "Good reviews and public attention did not help my marriage," she writes. It came as a surprise when her husband ended their 30-year marriage. Ron Weldon, artist/musician/antique dealer, didn't like being "Mr. Fay Weldon." He was, she writes, a man of the "Former Age," the sort of men she grew up with, men she describes as being "without emotional conscience." Ted Hughes is her prime example.
"We were all pre-feminists then," she writes. "It did not occur to us that if men misbehaved, the answer was to have nothing more to do with them."
Weldon's early novels were dismissed by a literary neighbor, the American poet Louis Simpson, who, offering "constructive" criticism, told her that they were not novels at all since they lacked shape and form. Readers disagreed. They saw their lives and their concerns and the changing times and customs reflected in her work. She kept on writing at a furious pace, churning out novel after novel, many of them bestsellers. In "Mantrapped" she continues to write about the sexes with insight, imagination, and wit.
"The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again" revisits the four fearless ladies of a certain age whom Thayer introduced in "The Hot Flash Club," the first of what appears to be a series aimed at the "hen lit" set. This time the original Hot Flashers -- Faye, Marilyn, Shirley, and Alice -- play mostly supporting and advisory roles to four new characters, all plagued by a variety of impossible in-laws.
There's 26-year-old Beth, an academic in love with Sonny, a handsome carpenter whose possessive mother, Bobbie, is determined to undermine the romance. Carolyn, 37, is at long last pregnant, but her happiness is threatened by her elderly and very wealthy father's quickie marriage to scheming young Heather. Julia, 30, is trying to establish a good relationship with her 7-year-old stepdaughter Belinda, who hasn't spoken a word since her mother died two years ago, but Julia's efforts are sabotaged by Agnes, Belinda's bitter maternal grandmother. Polly, 60, is doing her best to help her snobbish, evil-tempered mother-in-law, Claudia, battle cancer. Amy, Polly's health-nut daughter-in-law, fearing her new baby might be exposed via Polly to Claudia's cancer "germs," refuses to let Polly near her grandson.
The four meet in the jacuzzi at Shirley's health retreat, the Haven, and exchange in-law horror stories. In the spirit of the original Hot Flashers, they agree to help one another, and follow through, using secret videos, role-playing, and clandestine surveillance, among other means legal and otherwise. The premise of this female-bonding fest is contrived, but Thayer has the knack of creating likable characters who grapple with problems that will strike a chord with many readers. "The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again" will please fans of "The Hot Flash Club" and may attract a younger audience.
Diane White writes every month about new light and popular fiction.
