Before The War

Description

Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty-four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and - almost worse in those times - intelligent. At nearly six foot tall, she is known unkindly by her family as 'the giantess'. Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant with another's child, and will die in childbirth in just a few months...Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien's fate to the reader, along with that of London between the wars. This is a city fizzing with change, full of flat-chested flappers, shell-shocked soldiers and aristocrats clinging onto the past. Inventive, warm, playful and full of Weldon's trademark ironic edge, this is a spellbinding historical novel from one of the best novelists of our time.

Reviews

'A romp of a read full of Weldon wit and wisdom, as well as sumptuous period detail' Daily Mail. 'A wise and witty story ... filled with sharp observations about life as we live it now' The Times.

Author description

Weldon's work includes more than twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children's books, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and a number of plays written for television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.