Closing [Paperback]

Zoe Fairbairns (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Organized around the lives of four women who participate in a high-pressure course in salesmanship, this is a tightly written, expertly plotted and highly intelligent novel by the British author of Benefits and Here Today. Fairbanks focuses on how the lives of her heroines, including their relationships with husbands and lovers, are changed, subtly or convulsively, by the aggressive program. There's Daphne, the course's trainer and something of a sergeant major, who has little time for a private life; Gina, an ambitious know-it-all who tries to be career woman, wife and mother simultaneously but falls prey to a female competitor's violence; Ann, a housewife into whose life come unexpected excitements and challenges; and Teresa, owner of a feminist magazine who has a hard time steering her way between "rocks of finance and whirlpools of ideology." Fairbanks speaks directly and perceptively to the condition of contemporary women torn by the conflicting demands of career and confusing psychosocial status. She's a novelist to be reckoned with.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

With skill and humor, Fairbairns shows the lives and status of women in today's Britain in this fourth novel that centers on four women who meet at a business seminar. Gina is young, bright, and upper class; Ann is a middle-aged widow from the working class; Teresa is a feminist running a struggling radical feminist magazine; and Daphne, the course instructor, is on the way up and indifferent to how she gets there. Fairbairns cuts between the four women's lives after the seminar has ended and shows how their careers, families, and loves are affected. Extremely pleasant reading that will especially delight Anglophiles. Janet Boyarin Blundell, M.L.S., Brookdale Coll., Lincroft, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Mandarin (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0413146901
• ISBN-13: 978-0413146908
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars women learning how to close a deal, March 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Closing: 2 (Hardcover)

"Closing" refers to the closing of a deal. This book features 4 very different women who's life lines meet at a femals only sales course in a hotel.

Gina is a self assured woman of the world, who works in sales. Ann, a some what shy mother, low on cash, who wants to be succesful in selling her sons home made models. Teresa who runs a magazine for her (ex-)boyfriend a media tycoon, who has set her a target. And Daphne who gives this course, a tough know it all.

The book is ordered in the stages that are the basis of every sales process: 1. you need it; 2. i've got it; 3. you can have it; 4. closing The book actually says a lot of interesting and to the point things on sales and closing the deal. And on the power of money. It's wonderful to see from the inside how these women take this in, what questions they raise, what they accept as workable, what they are cynical about.

The main theme circles around the lives, feelings, weaknesses, ambitions, struggles, dependancies and changes in these 4 women during this one week in the hotel. How they are different from how they appear to each other at the beginning of the book.

The book is a witty, somewhat cynical, very intelligently written picture of women-in-business. One of the very few on this topic. Very recognizable.