Novelists can often be disappointingly unremarkable as people but occasionally one, like Fay Weldon, is a force of nature. She seemed to pack dozen larger than life women into one, in every sense. She used to say ‘that was after I became a fat girl’, and that she chose to write most about the sort of women whose side she was on – the large and plain ones. In fact, she was on the side of all women, and spoke better in her fiction to her own and my generations than all the militant loud-mouthed feminists. She married three times, enjoyed men and their company and hated men being publicly belittled and emasculated but she simply believed that it was women who needed sticking up and speaking up for and she did it better than most.
She was a versatile, prolific professional, a witty, sharp-edged stylist as novelist and short story writer, but she was equally skilled producing original work for the screen.
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