Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Down Among the Women - cover

Down Among the Women

Fay Weldon

Publisher: Open Road Media

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

With her eye for the unending power plays between the genders, Fay Weldon chronicles two decades in the lives of three generations of women—and has a devilish good time doing it “Down among the women. What a place to be!” So begins Fay Weldon’s novel, opening onto 1950s London, where Wanda, a former radical who has left her husband, has raised her daughter Scarlet to be as tough and independent as she is. But twenty-year-old Scarlet has already had one abortion, and is about to become a single mother to the child she’ll call Byzantia. The novel also follows the lives of Scarlet’s friends: Sylvia, a born victim; respectable Jocelyn, hopelessly trapped in her dull, bourgeois existence; Audrey, who finally breaks out of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant, and doomed. Over the course of twenty years, they will discover it’s never too late to become the women they are meant to be.
Available since: 04/16/2013.
Print length: 222 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Short Stories of Kenneth Grahame - Known for Wind in the Willows but wrote impressive stories for adults too as you can hear in this collection - cover

    The Short Stories of Kenneth...

    Kenneth Grahame

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Kenneth Grahame was born on 8th March 1859 in Edinburgh. 
     
    At age 5 his mother succumbed to puerperal fever.  His father, who had a drinking problem, now sent his 4 children to live with their grandmother at her large house in Cookham, Berkshire. Here the children lived in large open grounds next to the river.  These early experiences would in later years, be retold in his writing through a myriad of characters. 
     
    Grahame loved being a pupil at St Edward's School, Oxford and wanted to enroll at the university there but his guardian demurred on account of the cost. 
     
    Instead, a banking career was chosen for him, starting in 1879 at the Bank of England, where he rose steadily to the rank of its Secretary until retiring, with a pension, in 1908 due to ill health. 
     
    Alongside his commercial career Grahame had written and published various stories and essays in several periodicals. Some were anthologized as ‘Pagan Papers’ in 1893, and two years later ‘The Golden Age’ and later still ‘Dream Days’ and its masterpiece ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ became part of many home libraries.  His ability to view life through the lens of a young and curious child was superb, enabling the reader to easily identify with the character.   
     
    Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899 and they had one child; Alastair, born semi-blind and plagued by health problems.  In a heart-rending tragedy he would later take his own life whilst attending Oxford University in 1920.   
     
    In 1908 Grahame reworked many of the bedtime stories he had fashioned for his son into the enduring favourite; ‘The Wind in the Willows’, describing the heart-warming adventures of Mr Toad and his friends.   
     
    Kenneth Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, on 6th July 1932. 
    01 - Kenneth Grahame - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
    02 - A Saga of the Seas by Kenneth Grahame 
    03 - Dies Irae by Kenneth Grahame 
    04 - The Magic Ring by Kenneth Grahame 
    05 - Mutabile Semper by Kenneth Grahame 
    06 - The Inquity of Oblivion by Kenneth Grahame
    Show book
  • White Lightning Don't Strike Twice - cover

    White Lightning Don't Strike Twice

    Nathaniel David Knox

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The choice was simple—moonshine or die. 
    Ralph Honeycutt wanted nothing to do with hauling illegal moonshine for the local bootlegging syndicate—but he soon learns things ain’t that easy in Prohibition country. 
    When a brood of masked, machine-gun-toting devils threatens to kill him and his whole family, it soon becomes clear Ralph only has one way out. Roped into smuggling moonshine in exchange for protection, Ralph finds himself working for the Waterloo Shiners—a clandestine group of outlaws led by one Casper LaMont St. John. 
    Thrust into a world of danger and turmoil in classic Prohibition-era America, Ralph’s world unfolds into a gritty tale of treachery, triumph, and tragedy as he desperately tries to keep his marriage, family, and soul intact. 
    Buckle up for this riveting ride through the sting and the sweetness of life and death in 1920s Wexler County, USA.
    Show book
  • The Loner - cover

    The Loner

    Josephine Cox, John Nichols

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The powerful new bestseller from Josephine Cox – the country’s favourite storyteller. 
    After a tragic accident resulting in the death of his mother, and the disappearance of his father, young Davie flees his hometown of Blackburn, unsure of what the future holds for him. Devastated, he must escape the vicious rumours about his mother as well as his memories of her. With nothing more than the shirt on his back, he sets off – to find his father, a livelihood and maybe a glimpse of happiness. 
    Meanwhile, back home, those Davie has left behind wait anxiously. There's Kathleen, his childhood friend who has held a secret close to her heart these past few years, and Joseph, his grandfather whose guilt at the events which unfolded that dreadful night burns right to his soul. Will they ever see their beloved Davie again? 
    Eventually, after months of wandering, Davie finds somewhere he can call home. But tragedy stalks him once more and it's not long before everything comes to a dreadful impasse. It's time for him to make a decision – to keep running or go back home and face the past once and for all… 
    In this riveting work of fiction, Josephine Cox, the Sunday Times bestselling author, weaves a tale of loss, longing, and the relentless pursuit of redemption. Davie's journey, fraught with tragedy and turmoil, is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a theme that resonates throughout the narrative. 
    For fans of Rosie Goodwin (The Winter Promise), Anna Jacobs (A Very Special Christmas), Katie Flynn (White Christmas), Catherine Cookson (Daughter of Scandal), and Danielle Steel (Upside Down).
    Show book
  • A Place We Knew Well - cover

    A Place We Knew Well

    Susan Carol McCarthy

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    "Susan Carol McCarthy blends fact, memory, imagination and truth with admirable grace," said The Washington Post of the author's critically acclaimed debut novel, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands. Now McCarthy returns with another enthralling story of a family-their longings, their fears, and their secrets-swept up in the chaos at the height of the Cold War. 
     
    Late October, 1962. Wes Avery, a one-time Air Force tail-gunner, is living his version of the American Dream as loving husband to Sarah, doting father to seventeen-year-old Charlotte, and owner of a successful Texaco station along central Florida's busiest highway. But after President Kennedy announces that the Soviets have nuclear missiles in Cuba, Army convoys clog the highways and the sky fills with fighter planes. Within days, Wes's carefully constructed life begins to unravel. 
     
    Sarah, nervous and watchful, spends more and more time in the family's bomb shelter, slipping away into childhood memories and the dreams she once held for the future. Charlotte is wary but caught up in the excitement of high school-her nomination to homecoming court, the upcoming dance, and the thrill of first love. Wes, remembering his wartime experience, tries to keep his family's days as normal as possible, hoping to restore a sense of calm. But as the panic over the Missile Crisis rises, a long-buried secret threatens to push the Averys over the edge. 
     
    With heartbreaking clarity and compassion, Susan Carol McCarthy captures the shock and innocence, anxiety and fear, in those thirteen historic days, and brings vividly to life one ordinary family trying to hold center while the world around them falls apart.
    Show book
  • If Blood Should Stain the Wattle (The Matilda Saga #6) - It’s 1972 and across Australia the catchcry is ‘It’s time’ - cover

    If Blood Should Stain the Wattle...

    Jackie French

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    It's 1972 in Gibber's Creek, and across the nation, the catchcry is, 'It's time'. 
      
    As political ideals drift from disaster to the dismissal, it's also time for Jed Kelly to choose between past love, Nicholas, the local Labor member, and Sam from the Halfway to Eternity commune. It's time too for Matilda Thompson to face her ghosts and the life that took a young girl from the slums of Grinder's Alley to being the formidable matriarch of Gibber's Creek. 
    During this period of extraordinary social change and idealism, modern Australia would be born. And although the nation would dream of a better world, it would continue to struggle with opposing ideas of exactly what that better world might be. 
    Jackie French, author of the bestselling To Love a Sunburnt Country, has woven her own experience of that time into an unforgettable story of a small rural community and a nation swept into the social and political tumult of the early 1970s. A time that would bear witness to some of the most controversial events in Australian history; and for Matilda, a time that would see her vision made real, without blood spilled upon the wattle. 
    PRAISE FOR TO LOVE A SUNBURNT COUNTRY 
    'a book about love of country that is heartwarming and heartbreaking, and hard to put down' 
    --The Advertiser, 4 stars
    Show book
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame - cover

    The Hunchback of Notre Dame

    Victor Hugo

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Set in 1482, Victor Hugo's powerful novel of imagination, caprice and fantasy is a meditation on love, fate, architecture and politics, as well as a compelling recreation of the medieval world at the dawn of the modern age. In a brilliant reworking of the tale of Beauty and the Beast, Hugo creates a host of unforgettable characters amongst them, Quasimodo, the hunchback of the title, hopelessly in love with the gypsy girl Esmeralda, the satanic priest Claude Frollo, Clopin Trouillefou, king of the beggars, and Louis XI, King of France. Over the entire novel, both literally and symbolically, broods the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Vivid characters and memorable set-piece action scenes combine to bring the past to life in this story of love, lust, betrayal, doom and redemption.
    Show book