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Rhode Island Blues (Weldon, Fay) by [Fay Weldon]

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Fay Weldon

Rhode Island Blues (Weldon, Fay) Kindle Edition

by Fay Weldon (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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A move into an old folks’ home marks a new stage of life for both grandmother and granddaughter in this “wry and witty” novel (Entertainment Weekly).

On one side of the Atlantic, Sophia Moore, an emotionally guarded film editor—troubled by her mother's long-ago suicide and her father's abandonment—overworks, incessantly contemplates her past, and continues an unfulfilling affair with the famous director of her latest movie.

But when she travels to the other side of the Atlantic to help her octogenarian grandmother Felicity settle into a Rhode Island retirement community, she begins to unravel mysteries about her family history—including the fact that Felicity is not, as she’d thought, her only living relative. Meanwhile, Felicity learns to gamble, falls in love, and uncovers the truth about the residence’s evil nurse Dawn. A hilarious tale of secrets, schemes, and late-life love, Rhode Island Blues is Booker Prize nominee Fay Weldon at her witty best.

“Smart and funny, Weldon's boldly plotted and finely crafted tale deftly satirizes our infinite capacity for self-delusion.”—Booklist

“Loaded with lively, appealing characters and satisfying, unpredictable plot turns.”—Elle

Print length

340 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grove Press
Publication date

December 1, 2007
File size

1032 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Can true love be found at the age of 83? It comes to pass in Weldon's latest offering (Big Girls Don't Cry, etc.), a jaunty but somewhat jaded romantic caper set in a Rhode Island retirement home and in London's Soho district. Felicity Moore is an attractive, sexually active octogenarian grandmother who has decided to move into the Golden Bowl Complex for Creative Retirement, an ominous institution where the staff is motivated to keep the occupants alive via financial inducements. Felicity's granddaughter, Sophia King, is a 34-year-old British film editor who'd rather live in the imaginary world of film (where she can discard unpleasantness on the cutting-room floor) than face the reality of her mother's suicide, her own simultaneous loathing of and longing for progeny, and her apparent lack of family relations aside from Felicity. When Sophia comes to New England to help Felicity settle into the Golden Bowl, she learns that her grandmother had another daughter whom she gave up for adoption more than a half century earlier. While Sophia returns to London in search of her long-lost aunt, Felicity falls in love with a compulsive gambler and together they outsmart the evil and sadistic Nurse Dawn. Between live half-sisters, dead stepchildren and cousins lengthily removed, the reader feels in need of a diagrammed family tree. Weldon's signature caustic humor enlivens this somewhat overwritten story, which succeeds in establishing that the search for ancestry is fairly complicated and usually disappointing. Since this is Weldon's first novel set in America, canny marketing might add more stateside readers to her devoted fans (who won't miss Weldon's name emblazoned across the cover). Agent, Russell Galen, Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

Smart, sexy, and infinitely charming, Rhode Island Blues tells the story of Sophia Moore, a loveless and guarded thirty-four-year-old film editor in London who believes her only living relative is her stormy and wild grandmother, Felicity. Troubled by her mother's long-ago suicide and her father's abandonment, Sophia overworks, incessantly contemplates her past, and continues a flat sexual affair with the famous director of her latest film. But when she travels to Rhode Island to help her grandmother settle into a retirement center, she begins to unravel mysteries about her family history that she never knew, while finding relatives she had no idea existed.

Fay Weldon's extraordinary wit lights up every page. Staggeringly beautiful and honest, Rhode Island Blues tells a story of longing, love, and, ultimately, forgiveness, as it holds a magnifying glass to the human heart.

"Weldon's gift for spiking her witty and rompingly entertaining fiction with incisive social critiques flow unabated in her newest novel, a whirlwind drama of sexual politics and family secrets.... Smart and funny, Weldon's boldly plotted and finely crafted tale deftly satirizes our infinite capacity for self-delusion."--Booklist

"Felicity's escapades and Sophia's investigations alike reveal a familiar cast of villains...whose selfishness, greed, and cruelty Weldon's joyously caustic cadences hammer as they frolic and tickle the humorously humane readers she invites us to be."--Kirkus Reviews

Fay Weldon was born in England, was raised in New Zealand, and received her master's in economics and psychology from St. Andrews University in Scotland. She is the author of Big Girls Don't Cry, Wicked Women, Splitting, and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, among many other novels, plays, and two books of nonfiction.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Fay Weldon was born and raised in New Zealand. Her novels and short stories best-sell around the world and wherever they go are awarded great critical acclaim. Her film and TV work wins enthusiastic viewers by the million, worldwide. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Across an ocean and the passage of time the lives of two relatives become intertwined in the past. Sophia, a 34-year-old film editor who tends to see life in relation to film plots, and Felicity, her eightysomething grandmother, have more in common than they realize, more than the suicidal Angel, a bohemian madwoman who seemed to be their only other relative. The two women provide an engaging counterplay as they enter two very different phases in their lives, seeking happiness and fulfillment. The discovery of Felicity's secret past and additional cousins with their own desires reveals more than either of them bargained for. Entertaining and well read by Jan Francis. Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Weldon's novel moves seamlessly from irony to poignancy and back without ever slipping into sentimentality. What keeps it afloat is the specificity and acuity of her perceptions. Sophia, a successful English film editor, yearns for the family connections denied her by the insanity and suicide of her mother. What she has is her grandmother, Felicity, a willful octogenarian with much tragedy in her past who is still intent on squeezing all the enjoyment she can out of life. Jan Francis captures the keen intelligence and humor of both women and perfectly handles the accents on both sides of the Atlantic. It's a smart, witty performance throughout. M.O. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Weldon's gift for spiking her witty and rompingly entertaining fiction with incisive social critiques flows unabated in her newest novel, a whirlwind drama of sexual politics and family secrets. Felicity is an expatriate Englishwoman with a painful past involving an evil stepmother, rape by her step-uncle (which resulted in a teenage pregnancy), mercenary marriages, and her daughter Angel's suicide. At least Angel produced Sophia, Felicity's only acknowledged progeny. Still elegant and impulsive in her eighties, Felicity decides to move into what seems like a paradisical Rhode Island retirement home but what turns out to be a virtual prison under the malevolent control of a hypo-wielding dominatrix. Londoner Sophia, stunning with her pearly skin and Botticelli hair, is a successful film editor who has long preferred movies to real life. She tries to be there for her flamboyant, I Chingconsulting grandmother, however, and flies over to help out, reluctantly leaving behind her film director lover. She also searches for Felicity's missing daughter, acquiring along the way two seemingly bland but actually uproariously troublesome second cousins once removed. As Sophia and Felicity, who outrages her keepers by launching a scandalous affair with a gambler, attempt to make peace with the past and open themselves to love, Weldon muses on how things change and yet remain the same. While Sophia and her peers have many more options than women of Felicity's age, they must still contend with society's stubborn chauvinism. Smart and funny, Weldon's boldly plotted and finely crafted tale deftly satirizes our infinite capacity for self-delusion. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Our preeminent fictional chronicler of the war between men and women takes a break to report on the state of battles between continents, generations, past and present.Or so at first it seems when Sophia King, whose knowledge of life is based on the films she's edited, gets an imperious phone call from her grandmother, Felicity Bax, demanding that Sophia help Felicity sell her house in Connecticut and find a living situation more suitable for a person of her advancing years. For Sophia, orphaned, unmarried, and unloved but for the intermittent embraces of preoccupied director Harry Krassner, the summons is a call to arms-an invitation to confront her dead, insane mother Angel, her own dereliction in failing to rush to Felicity's bedside during an earlier medical emergency, and the brave new world of America, which Weldon is visiting for the first time. As unquenchable Felicity, aided by Sophia, the I Ching, and her fractious New England neighbor Joy, plows ahead on the new adventure of locating new digs, settling into the plush, sinister Golden Bowl Complex ("a CIA training ground for surveillance techniques and psychological warfare"), and embarking on a December-November love affair with an alarmingly incorrigible gambler, Sophia burrows more deeply into her family history, and soon shakes loose relatives she had never known about. But Felicity's escapades and Sophia's investigations alike reveal a familiar cast of villains-uncaring patriarchs, conniving mistresses, self-justifying parasites of both sexes-whose selfishness, greed, and cruelty Weldon's joyously caustic cadences hammer as they frolic and tickle the humorously humane readers she invites us to be.Despite its apparent departures from her mold, this ends up as one of Weldon's most characteristic fairy tales, with the novelist (Big Girls Don't Cry, 1998, etc.) pressed once more into the role of the fairy godmother who'll rescue her heroines from the plots swirling perhaps a little too generously about them. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005FFPUS2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press (December 1, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 1, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1032 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 340 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,674,677 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,455 in Humorous Dark Comedy
- #1,919 in British & Irish Humor & Satire
- #3,042 in Literary Satire Fiction

Customer Reviews:
14 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jane D. Anderson

Good -- but way too loooooong!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2014

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Fay Weldon never disappoints with her rare insights that skewer society. But this book just goes on too long. Too long. The characters can't hold up their end near the end. They just kind of peter out -- and so does the reader. I was skimming just to give us all a decent exit. Even Weldon can't remain snarky when she hits The Wall. This book hits The Wall about three-quarters of the way in. The reader just doesn't want to keep running.

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Zuri

Too long-winded and tedious.

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2014

Verified Purchase

I never thought I would not like a Fay Weldon book, but this one lost me halfway. It starts out so well, so interesting, but Weldon, a scarily intelligent writer, let her protagonist become too deeply entangled in her study of lost and found relatives. It became too tedious to plow through -- I just could not summon up enough curiosity to plow through Weldon's detailed, literary prose. Oh, it's extremely well written: she knows how to conjure up amazing characterizations.

But sorry, Fay, I barely read halfway through Rhode Island Blues when I decided to leave the characters to whatever fates might befall them.

One person found this helpful

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Manhattantraveller

Amusing

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2012

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I hadn't read Fay Weldon in several years when I picked up Rhode Island Blues. The plot kept my interest but frankly I didn't want to spend as much time with the characters as it took to follow their progress through life. I felt slightly edgy nearly always while reading the book and perhaps this is a positive testimony to Weldon's character development but not one I found enjoyable. That said, I did want to know what happened next but only in a vaguely curious not really engaged way. I regret that Weldon hasn't stood the test of time for me.

2 people found this helpful

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Magicship

Very interesting book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019

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I enjoyed this book. Approaches a subject often explored (dating and romance amongst seniors) in a realistic way and with comedy.

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Lexicron

Fay Weldon, not at her best, is still a pretty good read

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2015

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with a female lead and in an assisted living facility.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Rhode Island Blues

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2012

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This is Fay Weldon writing at her cynical best. She has always punctured the pretensions of "institutions " and gives us a bitingly funny look at the way the rich elderly are battened on by unscrupulous rest home administrators. Thank goodness for 80 year olds with enough spunk to buck the system!

2 people found this helpful

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Mr. K. Mahoney

Don't count your chickens

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2000

It would be all too easy to assume from the title of Weldon's latest novel that it is a depressing read. However, I doubt that Weldon could ever seriously be mournful, especially not when you have both nurses and desire inextricably linked, as you have here. There's just a brief mention of Blues hero Stephane Grapelli, but that's just about how far the relevance goes. However, if you do know who Grapelli is, then you may well be of Felicity's generation in this novel. The title's also an oblique reference to Rhode Island Reds, a particularly fancied breed of chicken at the moment. Apparently, these poultry are extremely easy to rear. It's just Felicity's luck however, that she marries an American GI who hasn't a clue about how to run his own farm. She's even more unfortunate in that she believed his tales of a plantation mansion. Fifty years later, the funeral of her son-in-law from this marriage leads to a quite unexpected flirtation with romance.
Admittedly, parts of Felicity's life story are quite grim. Sophia, her only living relative, works in London as a film editor, whilst Felicity herself abides in Connecticut. Felicity has had a minor stroke, and is coming to terms with the reality of her advancing years. Sophia loves her grandmother - it's just that she feels far more comfortable when the Atlantic Ocean is in between them. Her busy life as a film editor means that she cannot just drop everything and be by her grandmother's bedside in Connecticut. Weldon is very perceptive in relating how much guilt can taint love, and how uncomfortable the young can be beside the old.
Sophia, and Charlie the chauffeur, tend to view the world from the perspective of the movies. When Sophia visits an aged relative Weldon notes that this old lady tends to use references from the fairy books of her youth in her conversation. Maybe what Weldon is saying here is that the motion picture is now the dominant form of fiction. Unfortunately, it really grinds my teeth to come across yet another character in an English novel this year that works in the Soho media world. If future readers ever come back to these novels, like Toby Litt's 'Corpsing', and Amy Jenkins' dire 'Honeymoon', they might think that everyone in England was working in film. The only writer who has a credible excuse for writing about Soho is Christopher Fowler who actually works there. The impression I get is that most young English novelists would really much rather prefer writing for the movies, and I can't help but think that this is very sad.
Sophia mentions many films in her narrative, whilst neglecting to mention the most obvious one: 'Harvey'. Okay, so The Golden Bowl is an old peoples' home, but it does stand comparison with the mental institution in Jimmy Stewart's movie. Okay, so you don't get to see the invisible rabbit in 'Rhode Island Blues' either - it's the interaction between the characters and the structure that seems quite similar. You don't see the whole of this story from Sophia's viewpoint, since Weldon chooses to flit between the main characters at times. It's quite a jolt to suddenly see the world from Nurse Dawn's perspective, who seems to be such a minor character otherwise. But then 'Harvey' also strayed from Jimmy Stewart's suspect vision, into other smaller narratives, such as the nurse's romance with the doctor. Although, this being Weldon, the Doctor/Nurse relationship here is far more risqué.
Feliticty's mental health comes into question when she starts seeing a gambling toy boy, and when the staff at The Golden Bowl discover what we've known all along - namely that her Utrillo painting is not a print. With insurance being such a premium in the litigatory States, moves are made to ensure the safe removal of the Utrillo from the Golden Bowl's walls (James Stewart's mental state in 'Harvey' was also brought into question due to a suspect portrait). Unfortunately, Felicity has also let slip to Sophia that she may have more family in England. Sophia, all alone apart from a temporary fling with a film director of Kubrick's stature, can't help but investigate her roots. She finds a couple of quite dull cousins who eventually let her enter their lives. Felicity impulsively decides to remarry at the tender age of 83. Sophia's cousins just as impulsively decide to check out their newly found grandmother, and petulantly join Sophia on her trip to the States. The question on everyone's minds seems to be this: is such an old woman capable of looking after a valuable Utrillo?
Ironically, Utrillo spent much of his own life in and out of institutions, with painting his only therapy. From this point of view, it's very fitting that his work should end up on the walls of an institution like The Golden Bowl. Sophia recognises the name of the old peoples' home as deriving from a passage in Ecclesiastes. No doubt it is also a reference to the novel of the same name - that also featured a suspected gold digger. What this novel seems to be about broadly, is the clash between the new and the old: the disparities between British and American culture, the contrast between the generations, and old and new forms of fiction. Several novels this year have discussed a problem which currently troubles Western culture: what to do with an ever aging population, from Will Self's vulgar 'How the Dead Live', to Barbara Kingsolver's life-affirming 'Prodigal Summer'. Weldon comes somewhere in between the two extremes. There is something quite merciless about some of her observations, mostly concerning the immigrant Charlie and his ever-increasing family. But most chilling and timely of all is Sophia's disquieting journey on Concorde. However, Weldon provides us with a mixed dish here; not all of her prognosis is quite as gloomy as this. The blues are there, but playing quietly in the background with the reds.

9 people found this helpful

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Sarah_Aliza

Fay Weldon is marvelous!

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2001

I don't want to say anything particular about the book, only that it was virtually perfect. Fay Weldon understands human emotions and faults. She expresses all of the thoughts and feelings people carry around all bottled up inside, and she does so with great conviction and humor. Just read the book.

3 people found this helpful

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JOAN M. MANCHIP

EXCELLENT READ

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2012

Verified Purchase

In the past, I have 'struggled' with books by Fay Weldon, BUT this I enjoyed.
I think this is because the tale of an aged lady still seeking to enjoy life echoes my own feelings.

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Rhode Island Blues (Weldon, Fay) Kindle Edition

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Fay Weldon

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