Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 11 December 2008.

A story not of a wicked stepmother but more a wicked stepdaughter. Fay Weldon gets right to the heart of this dysfunctional family, making the hairs stand up on the back of your neck as you read and wait for the inevitable deterioration of relationships. Gripping and intoxicating stuff.

Synopsis

‘I read my daughter’s diaries the other day. You may find that despicable, but let me share with you. You think truly dreadful things only happen in other countries, other cultures, far away: but they also happen in your own back yard, and to the nicest people.’

Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn’t considered his daughter, Isobel. She is a delightful, charming girl who spends her school holidays caring for the elderly and is the apple of Gavin’s eye. Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It’s not easy, but no one had promised it would be. Sappho perseveres. But she has a history, and the history works against her.

When it becomes clear that, contrary to popular belief, it is Isobel who steals Gavin’s love and attention, and Sappho who must fight for his affection, Sappho is at a loss. How can she win her husband back? With warmth, wit and her unique insights into the workings of the female mind, Fay Weldon has written a brilliant, unsettling new novel about family life today.

About the Author

Fay Weldon is one of Britain's best loved and most respected authors. Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born on 22 September 1931. She was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the United Kingdom when she was ten. She read Economics and Psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, before beginning a successful career as an advertising copywriter. She gave up her career in advertising, and began to write full-time. Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967. Fay Weldon is a former member of both the Arts Council literary panel and the film and video panel of Greater London Arts. She was Chair of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. She was awarded a CBE in 2001. She lives in Dorset with her husband, the poet Nick Fox.   Fellow novelist SOPHIE KING on FAY WELDON Fay Weldon got me through my teenage years and my twenties. I don't know what I would have done without her naughty, feisty heroines. I normally prefer the close third person narrative but her authorial voice is so wicked that it has a delicious character in its own right. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation