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A review by lisa_mc
Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon
4.0
What if events of the past few years turned out a little different? What if someone who wasn't ended up being so? How would the world be different? Fay Weldon takes on these questions and blurs the lines of perception and reality, fiction and history in the clever, engaging "Chalcot Crescent."
Frances, the narrator, is an 80-something woman in the London of the near future, where the sociologist/psychologist-run National Unity Government (or "NUG") has taken over. Not as touchy-feely as it sounds, this government has its own rules for society. But the book's not really about that; it just forms the backdrop. Frances -- a fiction writer, presented in the intro as the sister Fay lost when her mother had a miscarriage -- moves back and forth between the past and the present, detailing her lovers and friends and family history as her grandchildren plot against the NUG and she's stuck in her house on Chalcot Crescent.
What is Frances imagining and what is real? Are her children everything they seem? And what's really in National Meat Loaf since it's "suitable for vegetarians" -- or is it? Less a cautionary tale than a glimpse at what we might have to get used to, "Chalcot Crescent" is at turns wryly funny and wistful, gently and honestly exposing the various weaknesses most of us would demonstrate in the face of changes we don't fully understand.
Frances, the narrator, is an 80-something woman in the London of the near future, where the sociologist/psychologist-run National Unity Government (or "NUG") has taken over. Not as touchy-feely as it sounds, this government has its own rules for society. But the book's not really about that; it just forms the backdrop. Frances -- a fiction writer, presented in the intro as the sister Fay lost when her mother had a miscarriage -- moves back and forth between the past and the present, detailing her lovers and friends and family history as her grandchildren plot against the NUG and she's stuck in her house on Chalcot Crescent.
What is Frances imagining and what is real? Are her children everything they seem? And what's really in National Meat Loaf since it's "suitable for vegetarians" -- or is it? Less a cautionary tale than a glimpse at what we might have to get used to, "Chalcot Crescent" is at turns wryly funny and wistful, gently and honestly exposing the various weaknesses most of us would demonstrate in the face of changes we don't fully understand.