Life Force [Mass Market Paperback]

Fay Weldon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

Weldon's latest novel is about the glorious pleasure of sexuality and the havoc it can wreak when we succumb to it. It's a story about marriage and infidelity, and the fact that one occasionally requires the other for survival. When Mr. Leslie Beck reappears in the lives of four friends--three of them married, and all past paramours of Beck's--he revives the secrets and passions of the past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Weldon lets blood and makes the reader love it in this modern morality tale about four women friends who for 20 years shared the joys and sorrows of family and career in and near London--and who have all been paramours of the extravagantly endowed Leslie Beck.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Weldon's kicking up her heels again, and raising great, intoxicating clouds of dust, in this delectable new novel written all around the theme of infidelity. Or perhaps the theme's just sex--which, when it occurs extramaritally, can't be gainsaid or stopped: it's just the ``Life Force...leaping...like electricity, from this one to that one, burning us up, wearing us out, making us old, passing on, its only purpose its own survival...the best thing that ever happened to us.'' Here, the ``Life Force'' is embodied by an ambitious London developer, Leslie Beck, he ``of the active penis,'' which is on record as being ``exactly one-seventh his height'' (and he is not that short). In the 70's, it seems, a bevy of yuppie housewives danced to his tune, including: the lonely mountain-climber's wife Rosalie (whose husband walked into the hills one day and never returned); her friend Nora; Nora's erstwhile friend Susan (whom Nora caught in a clutch with her very own husband, ergo the erstwhile); and Marion, who, together with Leslie, sold the baby they made to a nice couple from Johannesburg, and then opened an art gallery with the spoils. Twenty years after foxy Leslie has had his day in the chicken coop, he reappears, a 60-year-old widower, to make things happen in the lives of all these women again. The results are perfect Weldon off-the-wall: arson set by Nora since her husband's finally left her; the surprise appearance of Leslie and Marion's South African son; and the return of Rosalie's mountaineering Ulysses, who shows up just in time to save Rosalie from being electrocuted in the bathtub by a mass murderer beau. Who cares if the voice occasionally sounds a little treacly as it addresses its ``dear reader.'' The rest is great fun: Virginia Woolf with a pineapple on her head and no problem with sex at all. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140159142
• ISBN-13: 978-0140159141
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,194,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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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 Read it immediately!, August 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Life Force (Isis Series) (Audio Cassette)

In present day London a middle aged woman looks back at the time when she, and a group of her female friends, were all unfaithful to their husbands, and all with the same man. The story which she tells is a master piece of black humour, and reveals much about friendship, infidelity, and how the past will always catch up with you. The language is dazzling - sharp, inventive, concise and witty. The humour is black and the cast of characters bizarre, fascinating and entirely convincing. The way that different voices and different timescales are used is original and works brilliantly. Very few books manage to be both frivilous and profound - but this one does. Women will find this book talks honestly about why women are unfaithful. Men may find it a worrying read!