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Searching... | PRZS3000002353 | PR4752 C56 1989 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
A novel about split personality, about the components of the self and genetic engineering. It tells the fate of Joanna May, who at the age of 60 discovers that she has been cloned and there are in fact four other versions of herself in existence.
Author Notes
Fay Weldon was born in Worcester, England on September 22, 1931. She read economics and psychology at the University of St. Andrews. She worked as a propaganda writer for the British Foreign Office and then as an advertising copywriter for various firms in London before making writing a full-time career.
Her work includes over twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children's books, non-fiction books, and a number of plays written for television, radio and the stage. Her collections of short stories include Mischief and Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide. She wrote a memoir entitled Auto Da Fay and non-fiction book entitled What Makes Women Happy. She wrote the pilot episode for the television series Upstairs Downstairs.
Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967. Her other novels include Praxis, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Puffball, Rhode Island Blues, Mantrapped, She May Not Leave, The Spa Decameron, Habits of the House, Long Live the King, and The New Countess. Wicked Women won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.
Fay Weldon died on January 4, 2023, in a nursing home in Northampton, England, at the age of 91.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
Joanna, a beautiful and bored 60-year-old, discovers that her ex-husband cloned one of her eggs 30 years earlier and that the four resulting clones are currently undergoing crises brought on by men. ``With characteristic antic energy, Weldon offers another penetrating look at our urges to sex and parenthood, love, power and revenge,'' said PW. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Now in her 60s, attractive Joanna May has lost her husband, ruthless executive Carl, to divorce, and her lover to death, apparently a victim of her husband's hitman. Alone and childless, Joanna tries to regroup and in doing so makes an extraordinary discovery: Carl had four eggs removed from her reproductive system and ``cloned'' when she was 30. The four resulting women, implanted as embryos in different women, eventually meet up with one another and with Joanna. An odd premise, indeed. Weldon has a deft hand, and although her characters are mostly stiff and unlikable (particularly Carl, who survived a grim childhood), the story moves along briskly. This would not suit the taste of many fiction readers but is not without appeal. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/89.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
