Fiction, Women's Biography, British & Irish Literary Biography, Literary Figures - Women's Biography, World Literature, Fiction Subjects

Mantrapped

Name: Mantrapped
Author: Fay Weldon
ISBN: 9780802142177

by Fay Weldon

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Overview

"Trisha had been rich and Trisha had been poor, and she knew it was better to be rich. But now she was to be poor again: not just poor but stripped of her identity. She is to swap sex, and her very soul, with young, handsome, trendy Peter Watson. She passes him too close upon the stairs, and some might think what happens - a first in mankind's history - is an improvement and some might not. Peter's partner Doralee thinks not." Inadvisable, writes Fay Weldon, in this book - part high concept novel, part memoir, part the recent history of a culture - to cross on the stairs. Mantrapped is the continuing story of Fay Weldon, writer, mother, daughter, sister, cook, campaigner, juggler of life, time, work and money. Like Trisha she has been rich, and like Trisha she has been poor: like Trisha she has been well and truly mantrapped, and - unlike Trisha - does not regret it one bit. From 1960s London (wild parties, no money) to 1970s Somerset (animals, wild parties, no money) Weldon has lived a life rich in adventure and courage. The things you regret, as she points out, are what you don't do, not what you do.

Synopsis

Mantrapped is a dazzling new work that continues Fay Weldon’s critically acclaimed memoir, Auto da Fay, and tells the story of a woman down on her luck. Trisha is forty-four and at the end of her rope: creditors are coming and boyfriends have long left. Then, one day, on the stairs above her local dry cleaner, she bumps into the dashing Peter Watson, an editor for the local newspaper. After brushing past each other, they mysteriously and instantly swap souls. Peter looks down to see himself housed in Trisha’s much curvier form, and Trisha discovers she’s newly equipped with hairy legs and a six-pack. Mixing humor, imagination and insight, Mantrapped proves that Weldon is still the best at writing about the sexes.

The New York Times - Sarah Churchwell

Weldon is never less than readable and always amusing, and when she's commenting on herself and her own life instead of ''society,'' she can be extremely acute.

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Editorials

Sarah Churchwell

Weldon is never less than readable and always amusing, and when she's commenting on herself and her own life instead of ''society,'' she can be extremely acute.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

After many novels, screenplays, essays and an acclaimed memoir, Auto da Fay, Weldon now adds "reality novel" to her repertoire. Presented as a continuation of Auto da Fay, the book is a curious hybrid: something Weldon calls "novel and autobiography side by side, leaping from one to the other, but related." Its fictional protagonist is 44-year-old Trisha, who won the lottery, spent her fortune and is now relegated to niggling London poverty. Things take a turn for the worse when her soul exchanges bodies with that of young, handsome Peter. Now Doralee, Peter's life partner, is left to sort out an impossible situation, bemoaning the fact that there's no support group "for the transfer of your partner's being into someone else's shoddy, badly-looked-after body." These episodes are vintage Weldon: satirical, hyper-realistic and punctuated by biting truths. The autobiographical sections, interleaved with Trisha's story, are occasionally retreads of material from the previous volume, but mostly recount Weldon's further adventures as she juggles family and career. Weldon reveals the reality of her life behind her fiction, proving that "nearly everything you write about, you realize one day, has its roots somewhere in the past." Consider this the ultimate version of life and art imitating one another. Agent, Carlisle & Company. (Dec.) Forecast: Though fans of Weldon will be pleased, turning newcomers and fiction/memoir traditionalists on to this book may take more cajoling. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Almost all writers draw on aspects of their own lives for the raw material of their books, but only someone as talented as Weldon-provocative, witty, and refreshing even at the worst of times-could carry off this hybrid (following Auto da Fay: A Memoir), which Weldon calls a "reality novel." Blowsy and down on her luck, Trisha takes a humiliating job at a dry cleaners after blowing all of her lottery winnings. Meanwhile, yuppie neighbors Peter and Doralee are basically happy together until the day that Peter and Trisha brush past each other on the stairs and, in a typical Weldonian plot twist, their souls switch bodies. Doralee drags the couple to psychiatrists and priests, hoping to find a way to fix the situation, but it takes an act of random violence to solve the problem. The fun comes when Weldon interrupts the novel with background from her own life that touches in some way on the experiences of her characters. Though it may drive catalogers crazy (fiction or nonfiction?), this is highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/04.]-Nancy Pearl, formerly with Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Though billed as a novel, this very slight tale of a man and woman who switch souls on a stairway cedes about half its pages to an acerbic continuation of Weldon's recent memoir, Auto da Fay (2003). If only it were that engrossing. The narrative begins well enough, introducing us to Trisha, who gave up a modestly successful acting career nine years ago when she won the lottery but has now run through every penny. Selling all the expensive junk she acquired will barely cover her debts, so sexy, goodhearted, not-so-young Trisha goes to live above a dry-cleaners in a fringe-y section of London, promising the rapacious female proprietor that she will help out with the mending. "So far so good," as Weldon writes after her cogent introduction of a heroine whose "soul was much like her mattress: soiled but comfortable." Unfortunately, this phrase introduces the author's rambling memories of her life and loves, which increasingly intrude into Trisha's story and ensure that readers are captivated by neither. Just as we relax into Weldon's amusingly cranky reminiscences, deciding that we will forgive the 73-year-old writer a certain amount of old-fart complaining ("our whole existence is threaded through with cheapo TV fiction"), we're yanked back to Trisha or-worse-Peter, the yuppie who eventually ends up in her body and his tiresome girlfriend Doralee. (It's symptomatic of the book's general sloppiness that Doralee is "size 10 aiming for a size 8" in one chapter, a "size six thirty-two-year-old" 23 pages later.) Weldon's eye for human weakness and vanity is as sharp and unforgiving as ever, and there's mean-spirited fun to be had in her blistering account of husband Ron Weldon's self-pity andself-serving contempt for his wife's popular success. But she barely tries to make her absurd plot premise credible, or at least compelling, and she blows off her characters with a blood-soaked but silly finale. So lazy and off-the-cuff that one wonders if the author even bothered to reread her first draft. Agency: Carlisle & Company