Gender politics can provide rich pickings for novelists, but Fay Weldon's Death of a She Devil and Dawn O' Porter's The Cows are a little unsatisfying.
DEATH OF A SHE DEVIL
Fay Weldon
Head of Zeus Ltd
THE COWS
Dawn O’Porter
Harper Collins
By ELSPETH MCLEAN
Gender politics can provide rich pickings for novelists, but these offerings from Fay Weldon and Dawn O' Porter are unsatisfying.
In Death of A She Devil, veteran author Fay Weldon has written a sequel to her 1983 tour de force The Life and Loves of a She Devil.
Ruth Patchett, the original She Devil who underwent massive surgery in order to become like her husband Bobbo's mistress Mary Fisher, is now in her 80s, still living in the High Tower which was previously owned by Mary.
At the end of the first novel, Bobbo was safely behind bars (a move engineered by vengeful Ruth) and Mary was dead.
In the sequel, Bobbo is in his 90s, ensconced in the High Tower where he behaves badly towards the hired help and Ruth waits for him to die. Mary Fisher's ghost hovers in and out of the plot.
The High Tower is also the home for a charity, the Institute for Gender Parity, presided over by Ruth, now Dame Ruth, honoured for her services to the community.
The IGP's mission is to bring about equality of dignity and wealth between the genders. Accounts of the board meetings are fun and should resonate with anyone who has served on a committee.
At Ruth's side is her ambitious personal assistant Valerie Valeria. Valerie eventually takes up with Ruth's grandson Tyler, a beautiful but rather vacuous young man, unable to get a job because women are preferred. Tyler is persuaded to transition to Tayla.
This turns out to be a great disappointment. Under Valerie's influence, Ruth had "believed the man-woman, the woman-man could become the norm and that would be the end of the gender wars, and with that so many ills''.
However, she decides Feminist Man, "in pretending to be an ally, was the most dangerous enemy of them all''. She fears she has betrayed her gender and that women are going to be despised and derided again.
While Weldon's writing is clever and funny, the meandering story lacks the deliciousness and bite of the original She Devil. Perhaps she would have been better to leave Ruth et al stuck in the 1980s.
In The Cows, Dawn O'Porter attempts to illustrate that today's women do not have to fall into a stereotype or follow the herd.
The book's blurb tells us Tara, Cam and Stella are all trying to find their own voice in all the noise of modern life, while being screamed at by society that they should live one way.
Cam is the most irritating of the three. As she is a successful lifestyle blogger, we have to endure large tracts of her tedious posts/sermons on feminism and her supposedly fabulous life.
It is hard to believe people would get enthused about her writing, or that 36-year-old Cam would attract national attention in Britain for her views about not wanting to have children.
Tara, an award-winning documentary producer, and single mother ( the result of a one-night stand) is unwittingly thrown into the spotlight after she is recorded masturbating on a train and the footage goes viral.
O'Porter does a good job of portraying the impact of modern media exposure (no pun intended)
and subtly highlighting the differences in the way male and female behaviour is regarded.
It also allows O'Porter to pen some funny scenes. These include Tara trying to explain to her mother what has happened and, later, Tara's discomfort when the news of the train incident prompts her parents' friends to recall some of their sexual experiences.
The third main character is Stella, who is facing decisions about having her breasts and ovaries removed because she carries a BRCA gene mutation, increasing her chances of getting cancer.
If she goes for the surgery and wants to have a baby naturally, she needs to do it as soon as possible, but she does not have a partner.
The plot, which has both unexpected and predictable turns, connects all three women.
Perhaps this novel will appeal to chick-lit aficionados, but it was too long (435 pages) and too preachy for me.
Elspeth McLean is an ODT columnist and former health reporter.
Win a copy
The ODT has five copies of Dawn O’Porter’s The Cows to give away courtesy of Harper Collins. For your chance to win a copy, email books editor shane.gilchrist@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email, and ‘‘The Cows’’ in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, June 27.
LAST WEEK’S WINNERS
Winners of last week’s giveaway, Paddy Richardson’s Through The Lonesome Dark, courtesy of Upstart Press: Chrissy Montgomery, of Dunedin, Roger and Wendy Browne, of Alexandra, Chloe Rosenberg, of Dunedin, Jan Muir, of Mosgiel, Kathy Anderson, of Hawea.
