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| The Stepmother's Diary | 
 enlarge | Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £10.19
You Save: £6.80 (40%)
New (19) from £8.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 59256
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 1847242049
EAN: 9781847242044
ASIN: 1847242049
Publication Date: September 4, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Weldon at her sharpest and most current November 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
'I read my daughter's diary the other day. Let me share with you. You may think you know pretty much what's going on in your own family. Believe me, you do not. You think truly awful things only happen in other countries, other cultures, far away: but they also happen in your own back yard, to the nicest people, and at the hands of others who believe that they too are perfectly sane and nice, the kind who sort the household waste and try to save Africa.'
Weldon has always been good at dysfunctional families, money and property and this is a return to form, giving us the point of view of Sappho, the stepmother but not the wicked stepmother familiar from fairy tales.
Weldon uses the device of the story being reviewed and analysed by Emily, mother to Sappho as she reads her daughter's diary. Emily, a psychoanalyst had warned her daughter that the archetype had changed - that `wicked stepdaughters are more common now that wicked stepmothers ever were.' However, it is a function of a Weldon novel that warnings are never heeded and Emily marries Gavin, formerly husband to Isolde.
There are the usual turnarounds you see in Weldon - the man who becomes a financial drain the moment the knot is tied, the theft of talent and the dissipation of money and success. Weldon builds suspense through the twists and turns of these situations and as they deteriorate the reader cringes.
Somehow she does it all better here and with more wit and style than she has done for a while.
 Original and entertaining as ever! September 26, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Fay Weldon is indeed on fantastic form in this highly entertaining novel. She is endlessly inventive, remarkably perceptive, and always a great joy to read.
A real treat! September 15, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is vintage Fay Weldon, she is at the peak of her powers. I loved this book.
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