The Heart of the Country (25 page)
Read The Heart of the Country Online
Authors: Fay Weldon
How many characters make up one woman’s personality?
There is certainly more to Lady Rice than her husband realizes - at least three other people currently share his wife’s body. And when Sir Edwin Rice decides to apply for divorce, these other personalities begin to emerge…
A darkly comic portrait of one woman’s shattering response to divorce.
Splitting
is available
here
.
In this superlative anthology, Fay Weldon introduces readers to a cast of mothers, children, wives, and lovers—all of them unforgettable, timeless female characters. In “Subject to Diary,” a successful forty-ish career woman sits in an abortion clinic pondering motherhood.
In “The Year of the Green Pudding,” a woman who seems to doom everyone and everything she touches vows never to fall in love again. And an analyst’s office is the setting for a series of stories that feature four female patients—including a murderer—who lay bare their souls.
Moon Over Minneapolis
is available
here
.
In “Christmas Lists—A Seasonal Story,” the endless lists created by a suburban couple become a metaphor for marriage, family, and enduring love. In “Delights of France or Horrors of the Road,” a woman goes to a psychiatrist to cure her sudden, inexplicable paralysis, unaware that her constant bragging about her brilliant physicist husband conceals a raging fury. “Redundant! or the Wife’s Revenge” takes place in a plastic surgery ward, where Fay Weldon finds an ironic humor. The title story, Polaris, introduces newlyweds Meg and Timmy, whose union is tested when Timmy is called away to naval duty and Meg discovers a shocking secret.
Polaris
is available
here
.
When Natalie’s husband, Harry, kisses her and their two children goodbye, departs for the office, and never returns, Natalie immediately blames herself. If she hadn’t been cheating on her husband every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, he never would have left her for his secretary, a local beauty queen...
The Heart of the Country
is available
here
.
Sandra Harris—wife, astronomer (known for discovering the planet Athena), television phenomenon, and “professional searcher after truth”—has had an epiphany. She leaves her boring attorney husband and runs off with Mad Jack Stubbs, her trumpet-playing lover, and his groupie entourage, for a tour of Southern France. Pursued by her husband, Mad Jack’s wife, and the paparazzi, Sandra lives entirely for the moment—and great sex. In between, she ponders her past (institutionalized mother, Nazi war criminal father) while trying to ignore the deafening tick of her biological clock...
The Leader of the Band
is available
here
.
Victims, liberators, blackmailers, healers, and ghosts—they’re just a few of the fascinating men and women you’ll meet in this stellar, boundary-defying anthology.
From a heartless lover to a therapist who’s exposed for being a child hater, Weldon’s characters search for meaning, betray their vows, take pleasure in others’ misfortunes, or get pushed out of the family manse by their grasping offspring...
Wicked Women
is available
here
.
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THE LOVE & INHERITANCE TRILOGY
The
Love and Inheritance
trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin to soften...
Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.
In the dying days of Victoria’s reign, the events of a single turbulent morning herald bankruptcy and ruin for the Earl of Dilberne. His wife, the Countess Isobel, believes the solution is to marry off their handsome, wilful son to a rich and pretty heiress from the Chicago stockyards. It’s a clash of cultures and principles that rocks the household from parlour to pantry.
Gold mines fail, bankers plot, bad girls flourish, the London fog descends, Royalty intervenes and unlikely lovers triumph.
Habits of the House
, the first book in the Love & Inheritance trilogy, is a ravishing portrait of the
fin de siècle
from one of our best-loved British authors.
Habits of the House
is available
here
.
With London Society in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of King Edward VII, the Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in lavish preparations. Yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret, and no wonder with a much longed-for heir on the way, an elopement, family tragedy, a runaway niece and a gaggle of fraudulent spiritualists to contend with…
Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation – a generation with somewhat radical views…
Long Live the King
is available
here
.
III.
The New Countess
The King had foreign tastes; a French chef would have to be brought in and where could one find such a one at short notice? Existing staff would have to move up and share beds, which always made them sulky and resentful just when they should not be. Pathways must be constructed so the ladies would not get their feet muddy as they joined the men, and field kitchens erected so that dishes could be served hot and claret warmed. At least the King’s champagne – he had to have champagne when shooting, though frugal enough with alcohol otherwise – would be cold enough. Isobel found her heart beating hard and her breath coming short. Five months to prepare for one weekend – it was a monstrous task.