Rate this book

Chalcot Crescent (2009)

by Fay Weldon(Favorite Author)

3.25 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1848872682 (ISBN13: 9781848872684)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Corvus

review 1: This was an intriguing read and it is narrated from the viewpoint of an 80 year old woman writer named Frances. She spent and borrowed money like it was going out of fashion in the good times and carried on spending but it was too difficult to borrow in the bad times and guess what, she ended up broke and in debt so the money did go out of fashion after all. Lessons for us all there. This book is set in the very near future and it might come true any day now, when the world economy collapses and we have to go back to trading with other countries what little goods we actually produce. This country (UK) falls into a dictatorship which is responsible for feeding it's own people. So they come up with the nutritional and tasty, national meatloaf but there are rumors that it is ... moremade out of old people. We are told through various back stories about the life of Frances and her sister Fay and her extended family. And these passages, I particularly enjoyed as we got to know the lot of them and how they were all connected to one another. To live in this way, was clearly bleaker than a Dickensian novel and if this is what's in store for me, then I don't know if I want to be around to endure it. Fay weldon is truly a gifted author, who's imagination shines and stirs and makes you think. Even though she says halfway through that you can give-up reading it if you want to and you have her permission, I'm glad I didn't as it was well worth finishing.
review 2: witty and wickedly clever. weldon presents a 'hobbesian' future; one complete with a Leviathan-like national government that - for the supposed good of all - controls everything from food distribution (you will never eat meatloaf the same after reading this novel) to who gets regular power supply (and therefore control the recharging of mobile phones and everything else). everything is public, nothing is private, so agree with these terms or be 'disappeared'. nothing like an alternative universe to make the real world seem like the beginning of a really bad movie. less

Download links for: Chalcot Crescent

Advertising