Hovering about are Scarlet's friends and protegÈes, all of whom exist only in relation to the men whose beds they grace, covet or leave. All of them tried to follow some sort of feminine ideal and great unhappiness resulted from squelching their own desires. The novel follows a group of 'friends' as they grow into women, amidst the patriarchal structure of post-war British society. Ribellarsi allo 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 𝘲𝘶𝘰 che dona loro il ruolo non tanto di sesso debole, quanto di sesso accessorio, funzionale a quello maschile, sembra loro inevitabile, nel corso della vicenda; eppure, non per tutte vi è un lieto fine a seguito di ciò.

Eighteen-year-old unmarried mother Scarlet, a lost child recovering from her first abortion, looks at the world with her friends and begins to see the truth. Follow Wanda, the tough 1930s radical, her daughter Scarlet, unmarried, pregnant and frightened, and Scarlet's friends -- born victims, snobs, obsessive lovers -- in their absurd, nightmarish, often hilariously awful liaisons.

Her friends are no happier: Sylvia, a born victim; respectable Jocelyn, hopelessly trapped in her dull, bourgeois existence; Audrey, who finally breaks out of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant, and doomed. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Una volta iniziato, ero già a metà libro; poi, d'un tratto, ho sentito il bisogno di rallentare e assorbire le vicende delle giovani donne protagoniste. I think perhaps because at this time of my life, this sentence completely resonated: "There is nothing more glorious than to be a young girl, and there is nothing worse than to have been one. This novel marked the beginning of what I know will be a long acquaintance between me and Fay Weldon, its author.

La rottura di catene come quelle imposte dalla disparità di genere è un processo lungo più di una vita. Questo romanzo ha segnato l'inizio di quella che so che sarà una lunga conoscenza tra me e Fay Weldon, la sua autrice. These women can only try to survive; and then, look with hope at the new generations, raised differently from how their mothers had raised them, destined to break with many of the patterns that had stifled them - once they all land in the tumultuous 1960s.

Not being familiar with this author’s work, I had little idea of what to expect, and all through the opening pages I was expecting a kind of social comedy with a political edge. But things do not slot neatly into pigeon holes, and as the women negotiate around the events in their lives, they discover their real selves. Praxis (1978) is noted for the development of its heroine, who endures in the face of repeated disasters. I used to love them, but now I’m reading this one, it seems like a parody, since she has such a characteristic, flippant style. All of these women, in whatever their own circumstances, are unhappy and bitter and although there are moments of relief and redemption, each of them are more than willing to throw one another under the (metaphorical) bus when suits.

Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.Fortunately that wasn’t the case because I couldn’t keep my grubby little fingers away from this book.