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Title: Before the War
Author: Fay Weldon
Narrator: Julian Clary
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-08-16
Publisher: Lamplight Audio
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
Consider Vivien in November 1922: she is 24 and a spinster. She wears fashionable clothes, but she is plain and - almost worse in those times - intelligent. At nearly six feet 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 man's child and will die in childbirth in just a few months....
Critic Reviews:
"A romp of a read full of Weldon wit and wisdom, as well as sumptuous period detail." (Daily Mail)
"The quirky, singular writing style...triumphs...with its unique characters and playfully ironic voice." (The Irish Sun)
Members Reviews:
Fay's usual quirky style.
The previous reviewers have summarized this book very well, so I won't go into the plot again. It's vintage Fay Weldon, complete with over-the-top characters (good characterization) and written her usual almost esoteric style. I enjoyed the book, up to a point, but cannot say I found the characters exactly lovable. Strange, almost otherworldly, yes ... With Fay Weldon it is best to suspend disbelief. The intricate deceptions are somewhat far-fetched, but as this is Weldon's style, you accept it. I did not like Adela, who is not much of a mother figure. I admired Vivian's fortitude seeing she wasn't very lucky in life. If you have read Weldon's books before, you know you'll find much that is quirky, and she displays sly undertones of amusement at her characters and their rather silly lifestyles. Quite enjoyable story.
Didn't like the characters
Couldn't get into it. Didn't like the characters.
What a fun book: irrepressible and a glorious way with words.
Before the War, shows us a domestic war in a magnificent novel by Fay Weldon. Quirky, witty, insightful with extraordinary originality that works. And, perhaps best of all, as we would expect from her, funny. A few pages into the book Feldon writes: âI will not distress you with Vivien forever. It is not normal in books, films or on TV for much attention to be paid to unattractive women of any ageâWhy should I break the rules?â Which, of course, is precisely what she does.
We meet Vivien, or Vivvi, in 1922: single, large, ungainly, five feet eleven inches tall, 20 years old and pregnant. Vivvi claims it can only have been the Angel Gabriel, or, as she had been told by a servant ââyou could not get pregnant if you did it standing up.â âVivien is young and rich but no flapper. She is too large and ungainly to look good dancingâ. Vivvi proposes to Sherwyn Sexton: handsome, a writer, an employee of her fatherâs publishing company and 5â 7â tall. For two months, in their large feather bed, with no sexual moves, they were blissfully happy. He fitted into her âlike a plum stone inside a plumâ. He is blissfully happy.
Vivviâs pregnancy, or rather the paternity of her twins, is an issue throughout the book, indeed as is their maternity.
The novel moves between London and Austria and from 1922 to 1939 when âAt last the real war could begin.â
Fay Weldon breaks all the conventions with gusto, a curious mixture of down-to-earth and the unlikely but it always works. What a fun book: irrepressible and a glorious way with words.
