Wicked Women

With Wicked Women , Fay Weldon has created an incisive collection of stories, turning her sharp eye on love, men, therapy, and the myriad of self-deceptions we depend on. Here we meet nuclear scientist Defoe Desmond, a post-Cold War irrelevancy, who is ineptly drawn to a youthful, wily, husband-stealing New Age journalist; three sisters named Edwina, Thomasina, and Davida, who are appalled when their mother finally gives their father a male heir–two years after his death; and Paula, who keeps so still waiting to hear evidence of her husband’s adultery that she does not notice she’s giving birth. Weldon’s world is peopled with therapists who blithely destroy marriages and family ties, husbands and lovers whose greatest cruelty is their detachment, and clever women navigating the perils and pitfalls of domesticity. Her wicked humor and seasoned wisdom are as evident here as always–and tempered by great compassion for the foibles of the human heart.