Watching Me, Watching You

Book excerpt: DIVFay Weldon’s first short-story collection features her trademark themes of feminism, sisterhood, and domestic livelihood, where the ties that bind can also draw blood/divDIV Love, loss, and the ever-changing sexual battlefield are the themes of this early anthology by master storyteller Fay Weldon: In “Christmas Tree,” the adulterous playwright hero embarks on a quest for true love, perhaps the most self-deceiving state of all; “Breakages” explores the fragility of married life as a miserly vicar’s infertile wife contemplates his much-darned socks amid ghostly visitations; the loss of hair and female friendship are brought to poignant life in “Alopecia,” while religion becomes an excuse for infidelity in “Holy Stones”; a holiday game of Monopoly reveals the widening holes in the fabric of a family in “Man with No Eyes”; and an old house and its inhabitants are haunted by doomed love in the title story./divDIV /divDIVBy turns humorous, ironic, and tragic, Watching Me, Watching You presents Fay Weldon at her most witty, original, and courageous./div