Customer Reviews

Worst Fears

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, Alexandra takes absolutely forever to get out of denial about the character of her husband--not credible at all. I don't believe anyone is that stupid. The reader is shouting, "You moron!" The lead character and story start out bad (Alex is even mean to the dog) and then all the characters and the story go downhill from there. Her late husband, her friends, and even her mother become more abominable. Injustice piles upon injustice. A. doesn't do any of the things we are rooting for her to do to make things right. She's appalling, utterly shallow and inert, and the ending is a terrible waste. The only excuse I could think of for such an awful story is that Ms. Weldon had bad things done to her and this was her revenge. P.S. I didn't find any humor. There was irony, sarcasm, bitterness, but not humor.

An actress, seemingly in a wonderful marriage, gradually learns the truth after her husband dies of a sudden heart attack. She emerges unbowed, if less innocent. The prose is Weldon at her best: simple, but sparkling with sharp edges. While the book reflects Weldon's sardonic view of human relationships, it is light, humorous, and even affirming at the same time. Worst Fears is the opposite of those books with unsatisfactory endings: not only does the plot eventually make sense, but the behavior of the characters, which at times seems contrived, also comes to make complete sense.

fay weldon is the most honest person alive when it comes to describing human nature and the funniest i've ever read. she is like a dose of cold water over the sappy tv sitcom type of books that make the best seller lists. her tart tongue can skewer even the most complacent hypocrite, and the most sanctimounius new-ager. she runs the gamit. she is very funny as she reveals peoples true natures and when the heroine begins to explode in bewliderment and rage, well, who can blame her for stealing her husbands mistress's phone diary and calling up a plumber and instructing her to go to the mistresses house at 600am. trust me a more sancitmounous other woman never existed, and the ending, i wont spoil it for you but it is a satisfying ending. fay weldon, thank you for telling the truth,and in such a funny way!

Fay Weldon books tend to be similar and are not for everyone. She sees people quite cynically (some would say truthfully?) and her characters are slightly two dimensional and caricatured. Her speciality is the relationship between the sexes - she tends to see both of them through feminist spectacles although woman come of worse then the men!. She can be wickedly funny and is in good form in this book. She also is very readable - her prose is deceptively simple because it is well crafted. If you have never read her this is a good a place to start as any other and if you are a fan you won't be disappointed.

As for the plot - not that important and you can read the other reviews for details. The book does deal with the loss of a spouse so if you are in that situation it may be best to read one of her many others this time.

Fay Weldon's novel Worst Fears starts and finishes with bereavement. It examines how a woman deals with simultaneous loss and revealed betrayal. Alexandra is an actress, if I might be excused such gender specificity. She is also quite successful. She is currently appearing in a London West End production of Ibsen's A Doll's House. She is therefore away from home a lot.

Her husband Ned has just died, apparently discovered on the floor of the family home by a visitor. It was a sudden and massive heart attack. Alexandra wonders what might have brought it on. She takes time off work, thus allowing an understudy temporarily to take her role. She returns to the rickety, old, antique-stuffed cottage in the country. It is perhaps a rural idyll that now has to be rewritten.

Her worst fears are that there is more than meets the eye. She also has some hopes, but from the start it seems unlikely they will be realised. She is greeted by the dog, Diamond, who seems to know something is wrong. She contacts local acquaintances, Lucy and Abbie, whom she suspects know more than they are saying. Hamish, her husband's brother, comes to stay to help sort things out. Sascha, Alexandra and Ned's little boy is with Irene, Alexandra's mother. It happens often when Alexandra is away at work. Her husband Ned, as usual needed space at home to concentrate. He was, by the way, was an authority on theatre, a critic, an expert on Ibsen and also interested in costume design.

As Alexandra delves into recent events, she discovers a tangle of interests, relationships and liaisons. All of them have implications for her, despite the fact that she was often not directly involved. The protagonists relate directly to one another. They socialise, if that might be the right word. They interact. They act. They play-act. Alexandra's worst fears begin to materialise.

Ned's surname is Ludd. It is surely not a coincidence that he shares a name with one of the wreckers of history. He is the only developed male character in the novel, despite his being dead. He never speaks, but his presence pervades, perhaps even controls everything that the still living can do. The truths of his life have been at best partial, his interests specifically personal. It seems that the women are positioning themselves to lay claim to ownership of his memory. And thus recollection, rumour and revelation unfold their tangle.

The above may suggest a rather one-dimensional approach towards a feminist moral, but it is much more subtle than that. This thread is there, of course, and is epitomised when Alexandra's part in A Doll's House - itself a play about women and emancipation - is exploited to success by her understudy via sexual stereotyping. And Worst Fears opens with two of the women involved viewing Ned's body, their attention drawn to a part of his anatomy that is to become one of the book's main actors. Their reverence is sincere as they genuflect before their flaccid altar.

This accepted, it seems also that the book deals more fundamentally with the more universal issues of self-interest and selfishness. All of these characters, despite their often social or private relations, are in conflict. They compete with one another and even with themselves. When liberation becomes a possibility, it is revealed as no more than an opportunity for even greater self-obsession, a means of shutting out the interest of others.

As the plot of Worst Fears unfolds, the impression it leaves is that these accomplished, middle-class, apparently comfortable people are all still engaged in a primeval struggle for raw animal dominance. The currency that is hoarded in the process remains the same as it would have been if the characters had never evolved from quadruped apes in a forest gang. There is no liberation here, for anyone, except, that is, via their words, the very weapons they use to prod, punch, pierce the reality that effectively confines them to themselves. These could be anyone's worst fears.

I do think Fay Weldon is a very good writer, and will probably read other books of hers.

But, this particular story was a disappointment. It should have been about an eighth as long as it was. And, it just didn't make any sense. Alexandra was endlessly in denial, and pathetically obliging when it came to allowing people to step all over her. The attacks seemed very unrealistic, and mind-numbingly repetitive.

And the fact that she, Alexandra, kept being referred to as she, Alexandra, yes, she, Alexandra, I'm talking about her, Alexandra. Arrrrg! What was that all about?

The brilliant Fay Weldon skewers and punctures hypocrisy is this wonderfully sly first-person narrative. Protagonist Alexandra Ludd is the only real, genuine, honest human being in this disturbing but ultimately triumphant (in a way!) tale of adultery/infidelity, backbiting, lies, and false friendship. Alexandra, a beauty and successful actress, is in a sham of a marriage, but she's the only one who doesn't seem to know it. Her late husband Ned, a failed theater critic consumed by jealousy of her success -- she makes the money, he spends it -- porked all available females in the environs of their country cottage to get even with her for the failures of his professional career. He lived a devious double life and was unfaithful to her in nasty and sundry ways much worse than mere physical infidelity. Additionally, he maligned her character and twisted the reasons for her behavior. Alexandra is a great character, and I was rooting for her all the way, even when it seemed that all had fallen apart like Humpty Dumpty, never to be put together again. It's a terrible aspect of human nature, but success/beauty/talent are resented by those who lack any of these three attributes; Weldon exposes it for what it is, from the obsequious pseudo-friends to the horny brother-in-law Hamish, who, feigning assistance to the grieving widow, is just itching for the opportunity to get into her pants; to the country folks' envy -- there is a wonderful cameo of a resentful child-minder, the servant of everyone's nightmares -- of the city folks, who seem to have too much and they too little. It's a witty page turner typical of Weldon's best work. Am already casting the film with Angelina Jolie as Alexandra, Brad Pitt as Ned, Heath Ledger as his brother Hamish, Helen Mirren as the older, Slavic femme-fatale Vilna, Julianne Moore as the duplicitous best friend and neighbor, Abbie (playing against character), et al. Am only stumped by the worst of the bunch, the dumpy lump/unfaithful wife Jenny Linden and the unethical therapist/counselor Leah. They are perhaps the most contemptible of the rich and subtle cast of characters. Weldon has the typical counselor's mealy-mouth platitudes down pat, but the manipulative Leah is evil to boot. A terrific read that would make a fabulous film.

Weldon uses an interesting disjointed story-telling style to expose Alexandra's husband's infidelities. Alexandra, an actor starring in a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House, is summoned home due to forty-nine-year-old Ned's sudden death from a massive heart attack. Alexandra works her way through the devastating realizations that nothing about the marriage was as it seemed to reach her empowered conclusions

I have read only 2 or 3 Fay Weldon's and this is definately as good as Puffball which I also really enjoyed. Worst Fears made me feel quite twitchy. Everything seems to be fairly simple when Alexandra's husband, Ned, dies but as the next few days go on an awful catalogue of discoveries unfold. Makes you think that things are not always what they seem.

I bought this at a book outlet, so it only cost 3 bucks, otherwise I probably wouldn't have gotten it. The back intrigued me, but I felt fairly let down after reading it.

I suppose as I'm not an adult or married, I wouldn't understand the fear of a spouse cheating on me. So maybe I just can't relate which took away from my experience reading this.

The main character just didn't intrigue me like I like in books. The way she dealt with her son seemed a little unbelievable but then, she does seem like she was pushed around a lot of the time.

I have to say, I was nearly believing she was insane, imagining that her husband was cheating on her at times. The writing was good, it just wasn't my speed.

The entire cast was mostly women. So it's not a very universal book, but maybe it wasn't supposed to be.

I wish that the characters had seemed a little more different from one another, but then, I'm not used to reading books mostly about women, so maybe they were just all blending together for me in this rural setting.

Overall, the writing was good, but I feel obliged to take off one star simply because I really didn't feel what the author was going through.