Affliction

Description

When a marriage meets a therapist... Annette and Spicer make a perfect pair: he thirty-nine, wide-shouldered, square-jawed, and often likened to Harrison Ford; she slight, fair, delicately featured, and sometimes likened to Meryl Streep. He with a son (Jason, eleven) from a previous marriage, she with a daughter (Susan, thirteen) from a ditto. He and she, after ten years, expecting their own baby. But on this, the first day of the rest of their blissful lives, Spicer fails to kiss Annette goodbye as he leaves for the office.

After hard times and odd jobs as a lone parent, Fay Weldon became one of the top advertising copywriters of her generation. She moved to TV drama (writing the pilot episode of the iconic series Upstairs, Downstairs) then turned to novels - including the classic The Life and Loves of a She Devil and The Cloning of Joanna May. A sequel to her acclaimed Love and Inheritance trilogy, Before the War, was published in 2017. Fay's been made a CBE for services to literature and she's currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

'Meet the shrink from hell -- alternately laughing and gasping, the reader follows Annette out of the pit and into the daylight!' Miami Herald 'Weldon scythes her way like a flymo!' Times Educational Supplement 'Affliction works like a slow-burning fuse!' Independent on Sunday 'It has crackling dialogue, tremendous pace and a monstrous husband called Spicer!' Daily Telegraph