Before The War
From a lioness of British literature, an absorbing, inventive novel of love, death and aristocracy in inter-war London
Consider Vivien in November 1922. She is twenty four, and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and — worse — intelligent. At nearly six foot tall, she is known unkindly by her family as 'the giantess'.
Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic London publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant with another's child, and will die in childbirth in just a few months.
Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien's fate to the reader, along with that of London between the wars: a city soaked in drizzle, peopled with flat-chested flappers, shell-shocked servicemen and aristocrats desperately clinging onto the past.
Inventive, witty and empathetic, this is a spellbinding historical novel from one of the foremost novelists of our time.
- Author
- Fay Weldon
- Format
- hardcover
- Pages
- 400
- Publisher
- Head of Zeus
- Language
- english
- ISBN
- 9781784082062
- Settings
- London, England
- Genres
- fiction, historical
- Release date
- 2016
- Search 9781784082062 on Amazon
- Search 9781784082062 on Goodreads