The Stepmother’s Diary – Fay Weldon
Ann chose Fay Weldon’s latest novel to be this month’s read: the story of a young writer’s experience of marrying the widowed husband of her successful mentor, and becoming the stepmother of the children that she used to look after. Confused yet? The story unfolds through the eyes of Sappho’s mother Emily who has been left with her daughter’s diary following a crisis, and just can’t resist a peek. Emily is a Freudian analyst which makes for interesting interpretation of what Sappho and the other characters have been up to.
This book has had some good reviews but we weren’t impressed as a group. I didn’t actually find it that boring to read – parts of it were quite enjoyable and created suspense well, but I came away thinking ‘what is it for?’ I didn’t know what it was trying to say or be. The best that I could come up with was that it is a misfired attempt at high brow chicklit. The cover definitely seems to be going for the chicklit market – we didn’t really know who the character on the front was supposed to be!
Daniel probably disliked it the most, expressing hatred of all the characters who he felt displayed a lack of humanity, and in his words ‘had no redeeming features’. Martin felt that Dan was being a bit harsh. A number of people found Sappho the protagonist quite vacuous, and none of the major characters seemed to catch anyone’s imagination. Seth really liked the literary agent, who unfortunately did not play a big part in the book. Ann felt that Weldon is a director of characters, rather than someone who focuses on character development, but that she had not pulled it off well in this book.
Seth felt that the plot was like ‘a dying man’s pulse’, and wondered what process the author went through before writing it. Martin agreed, saying that he enjoyed the beginning and end of the book, but that overall it had been full of interesting ideas that had not been brought to fruition, amd that it hadn’t been particulary well written.
Ann felt that although the book had made more of an attempt to go into the psychology of the characters more than in The Jungle, it had actually been much less effective. I found the references to Freudian and Jungian theory really irritating – Ann made the point that these were the extent of Emily and Barnaby’s personalities! We wished that Paddy had read the book so that we could get a psychologist’s viewpoint – Paddy feel free to comment later!
At times we all wondered if we had missed the point. Dan suggested that it might be a dark satire of the chattering classes with their literary pretensions, and Seth wondered if it was a play on Freudian feminist theory. However, after we had discussed these possibilities, we decided that if the satire was so subtle that none of us could pick it up, it hadn’t really worked.
Martin pointed out that the main theme of the book was whether people had seen and experienced what they thought they had. I felt that the unreliable narrator would have been a good way to explore this – after all there are several in the book, but that we weren’t given any subtle hints about when to suspect people’s interpretation of events. The step-daughter was portrayed as a complete monster but other sides of her personality weren’t explored at all. Martin thought that it was a feminist book in that all of the major roles were given to women, and the male characters were definitely in the background. I thought that Weldon was attempting to use the family house as a motif – with Ann suggesting that it was used to represent a sense of self.
Well in Dan’s words – ‘Chekhov it ain’t!’ Bizarrely, this is the only book club choice that has given me nightmares, considering some of the grim themes we’ve dealt with! Both Ann and I felt that Weldon can write better than this, so I would recommend trying one of her another novels if you have never read any of her books before.
