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Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon
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Chalcot Crescent (edition 2010)

by Fay Weldon

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1427191,119 (3.38)9
By 2013, capitalism has collapsed in Europe, and England has turned to protectionist policies, communal farms, and an intrusive National Unity Government that feeds its citizens National Meat Loaf and monitors people by street-corner CiviCams. In this bleak near-future, Frances Prideaux, once a successful writer of feminist novels and a proud product of the era of sexual liberation, is rehashing the sins of her past. As bailiffs try to repossess her house, Frances tells the story of her life--how she married her sister's boyfriend; rejected her stepson Henry, the revolution's creepily austere leader; and squandered her fortune and influence--and tries to keep tabs on her grandson, Amos, who is busy plotting against the government with his cohorts from Redpeace.… (more)
Member:tarshaan
Title:Chalcot Crescent
Authors:Fay Weldon
Info:Corvus (2010), Paperback, 288 pages
Collections:Your library, read, fiction - general, keep
Rating:****
Tags:fiction, acquired 2010, i, read, 2015

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Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon

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Showing 4 of 4
Quite good near-future sci-fi novel based on the possible life of the author's younger sister, who died before she was born. It's interesting that so many men write novels/TV shows/movies with a main character with their own name, but this is the closest I've seen a woman come to it. ( )
  annesadleir | Apr 11, 2012 |
Having never read anything by Weldon, I was very pleasantly impressed by this science fiction novel of manners. The central character, Frances, is a woman in her 80's looking back over her life as lover, wife, mother, grandmother, and successful author. Set in a future London in which resources are scarce and the government is nuts, this novel has tongue-in-cheek commentary on society and politics, alongside vivid portraits of characters who seem like people we know and relationships that flounder and flourish in any time. This is a fast-paced read that leaves behind plenty to contemplate. ( )
  sleahey | May 31, 2011 |
Although the first part of the book promises more than the rest delivers, the author's observations, when she wanders from the narrative are priceless, e.g.: " I was not particularly looking forward to the walk: I would have to keep stopping to rest along the way, and it wasn't so much the humiliation of this that bothered me, but the rage that goes with growing old, of your body holding you up as if it were at war with your mind. Once body and mind were hand in glove-no longer so. The mind commanded, the body laughed. And soon enough the body would win, and simply die." ( )
  DHealy | Dec 25, 2010 |
I saw this book mentioned in a New Scientist article focusing mainly on SF ("The Stories of Now" by Kim Stanley Robinson, 16 September 2009). I hadn't read any of Fay Weldon's books (which is why I avoided speaking to her when we were once both at the same party!), but I thought she seemed a curious author to be found in such a context, so I ordered the book from the library.

Indeed, the book is not science fiction, though it surely qualifies as speculative fiction, being set in a near-future Britain in which the contemporary (2007-09) economic crisis has resulted in the collapse of international collaboration and the rise of a semi-authoritarian regime. This deliberately reflects the wartime government of the 1940s, but with the addition of surveillance cameras and a food ministry that can call upon the resources of modern biotechnology to produce the National Meat Loaf (suitable for vegetarians), whose origins are a source of occasional unpleasant rumours (and explicit references to "Soylent Green") which seem not to be substantiated.

The narrator is a fictional sister of the author, Frances Prideaux, a writer in her eighties who spends much of the first part of the book sitting on the stairs attempting to evade the bailiffs. The plot revolves around an attempted coup, but the main focus is not the political action, as the "Redpeace" activists take over part of her house, but her view of it, often in a spirit of slightly detached amusement, embellished with fictionalized scenes in which she imagines those parts of the story outside her experience. (At one point she specifically wonders about which parts of the tale are actually her own invention, a problem which the reader is not entirely able to solve.) Much of the entertainment arises from the fact that almost all the protagonists, including the coup plotters and the senior official of the food ministry that they plan to kidnap, are her relatives, by blood, marriage, or illegitimate liaison. Her reminiscences gradually reconstruct the series of one-night stands, extramarital affairs, and semi-incestuous infidelities which has created this spider's web of half-siblings and step-grandchildren. A curious frisson of verisimilitude is provided by references to the narrator's sister, the writer Fay Weldon, whose boyfriend she once stole at a party. How much the author's life overlaps with her fictional persona is impossible to guess; no doubt she had great fun imagining her own personal alternate history, and to some extent this fun does rub off on the reader.

The authoritarian regime could have been something truly sinister, along the lines of "V for Vendetta", but it is mollified by being viewed through the eyes of an elderly lady who knows many of the people involved and can see both sides of the issues. This absence of harshness also, I guess, reflects its presentation by an author whose literary affiliations lies closer to Iris Murdoch than to George Orwell. (A critical reader might be slightly worried by the sympathetic tone with which the narrator brushes off the government's proto-Fascist tendencies, on the grounds that "better the devil you know".) Overall, I found the book an enjoyable melange of literary novel and topical social satire, in which the elements of modern technology and economic crisis help to construct a plausible scenario.

MB 19-iii-2009 ( )
1 vote MyopicBookworm | Mar 19, 2010 |
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By 2013, capitalism has collapsed in Europe, and England has turned to protectionist policies, communal farms, and an intrusive National Unity Government that feeds its citizens National Meat Loaf and monitors people by street-corner CiviCams. In this bleak near-future, Frances Prideaux, once a successful writer of feminist novels and a proud product of the era of sexual liberation, is rehashing the sins of her past. As bailiffs try to repossess her house, Frances tells the story of her life--how she married her sister's boyfriend; rejected her stepson Henry, the revolution's creepily austere leader; and squandered her fortune and influence--and tries to keep tabs on her grandson, Amos, who is busy plotting against the government with his cohorts from Redpeace.

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Book description
Fay Weldon’s twenty-ninth novel, Chalcot Crescent is a wickedly witty and prophetic portrait of the possible future of capitalism. It is the imagined life of Frances, Fay Weldon’s actual younger sister who did not survive her birth. The year is 2013 and eighty-year-old Frances (has-been writer, one-time national treasure) is sitting on the stairs of Number 3, Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill in London. While she waits for the debt collectors pounding on her front door to give up and leave, Frances writes. She writes about the boyfriends she borrowed and the husband she stole from her sister, about her two daughters and their children.

Frances writes about the Shock, the Crunch, the Squeeze, the Recovery, the Fall, the Crisis and the Bite, about the authoritarian National Unity Government, about ration books, power shortages, and the politically regressive Neighborhood Watch. As she writes, her grandson, who lives in her attic, cooks up a plot against the dictatorial government. At once funny and terrifying, Chalcot Crescent is both a satirical warning and a reflection on a life never lived.

~~ From Europa Editions
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