| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
NON-Fiction Book Reviews From our Archives |
June 2005 |
Auto Da Fay
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an autobiography
by Fay
Weldon, Key Porter Books, hardcover,
366 pages, $34.95 ISBN 1-55263-422-1
By J. M. Smith
Fay Weldon has published 25 novels, five short story collections, three children's books, a biography of Rebecca West, a collection of essays and a book about Jane Austin. She has written stage plays, screen plays, radio plays, television plays, and being reviewed here is Auto Da Fay, her autobiography.
This detailed, sometimes fascinating description of her life is, to quote the Sunday Times, "a book that reminds of the value of living first, writing later . . . What a shame life is pilotless, she sighs. And then she just gets on with it, knowing that the rich fruity haphazardness of her experience will startle and amaze."
Weldon was born in England in 1931 to Dr. Frank Birkinshaw and his wife, Margaret Jepson. She describes a sometimes frightening, hedonistic, dysfunctional family. It consisted of an unusual conglomerate of novelists, bohemians, musicians, etc. The lives of her father, mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles weave in and out of the text constantly. Collapsing marriages and marriages of convenience were the order . . .
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