Big Women (ePub)

Fay Weldon's new novel blasts into the Brave New World which women ¿ and their men ¿ fought for, agonised over, and thought they would inherit.

This is the story of women when they were wimmin: of that unforgettable blossoming in seventies England of hope, freedom, equality and sisterhood; and of what happened next¿ The novel is everything we expect from Fay Weldon, and more: not just a work of literature but an energising leap into the pool of social complacency, a feisty, no-holds-barred portrait of four women's attempts and failures to create a new life.

There's the feminist publishing house, founded one balmy evening at sedate No. 103 Chalcot Crescent in a flurry of argument, peace-making and naked dancing.

There's Layla: noisy, darlingish, high-profile: 'I am the only right-thinking feminist there is. It's all the others who are out of step.'

And Alice, the academic, the philosopher, the ¿ eventually ¿ Glastonbury witch.

And Nancy, boring, sensible Nancy who is the only one with any business nous.

And Stephanie ¿ the one who leaves her husband and children to embrace politics, men, other women¿

Their stories are intertwined with twenty years of all our lives ¿ blissful, rage-filled, treacherous, redemptive.

It is a novel, too, about money, power, pain and, definitely, Men.

Fay Weldon was born in England and raised in New Zealand. Her work is translated into most world languages. She lives in London.