The Fat Woman's Joke - Softcover

Weldon, Fay

3.43

416 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007291752 ISBN 13: 9780007291755

Publisher: Flamingo, 2008

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Fay Weldon’s first novel, a sharp and witty parable of the way people see themselves.

For several weeks, Esther Sussman had lived in a sordid flat in Earls Court. During the day she read science fiction novels. In the evenings she watched television. And she ate, and ate, and drank, and ate. She had not felt so secure since she spent her days in a pram. It had been her husband’s idea that they should go on a diet. Together they would fight middle-age flab and feel young again. It was the diet that had made Esther leave home. The lack of food had made her see things very clearly and she had looked at her life – the daily dusting, sweeping, cooking, washing-up – and found it all pointless. She had not felt strong enough for marriage, and so she escaped.

From the fastness of her Earls Court retreat Esther starts to recount the events leading up to her revelation to her friend Phyllis. ‘I suppose you really do believe your happiness is consequent upon your size?’ she asks. Phyllis does; Esther does not and triumphantly sets out to prove her point.

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Review:

‘Fay Weldon is a national treasure.’ Sam Leith, Literary Review

‘Fay Weldon’s voice is as unmistakeable as her acerbic wit.’ Financial Times

‘Fay Weldon writes as if she were Virginia Woolf and Roseanne Arnold joined at the hip. She is literary, well-read, totally in control, sharp as a needle and off the wall...’ Mirabella

‘Weldon, like Dickens, can have her readers perched on the edge of their chairs with excitement by the end of the first page and hold them there in a state of riveted curiosity until the last words.’ Evening Standard

‘Weldon is a gifted tease of a writer.’ Sunday Times

‘Prolific and provocative, Fay Weldon shines brightest in the league table of British women novelists.’ Time Out

From the Back Cover:

Esther Wells goes on a diet and the scales fall from her eyes. Depriving themselves of fatty foods, both husband and wife have new perspectives on each other, and the process is one of slow destruction of their marriage. Esther tells in flashback, from the depths of her basement apartment in Earls Court, the history of her marital disaster - in between her consumption of chocolate cake, tinned fruit, sweet sherry and a host of other high-calorie goodies. This novel examines the role of Womanhood. The time is the mid-sixties when sex role stereotypes are being examined and rejected, and Fay Weldon's book reflects the passions, humor, and anger of an era when women's self-analysis entailed a good deal of disruption. This novel depicts the rage and outrage of that traumatic era.

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