When I heard that Fay Weldon had died, I thought of those great early-ish novels, Praxis and Puffball, and of how much I enjoyed them as a teenager. Looking at my old Coronet paperbacks, I see something I didn’t recognise at the time: her stylistic innovation. Both are written in shards, brief paragraphs that float apart from one another in white space – the same technique now used by (among other writers) the very modish Jenny Offill.
Twenty years ago, I was dispatched to interview Weldon at home in Hampstead, north London. Her then husband, Nick, answered the door and immediately began a brutal interrogation. My name sounded familiar. Hadn’t I given Fay’s novel The Bulgari Connection, a book controversially sponsored by the Italian jeweller, a stinking review? Uh oh. But I wasn’t about to confess: I had a job to do. Was it definitely me he was thinking of? And was the review really a stinker? Maybe marital loyalty had made it seem worse than it was.
The interview began. Fay and I were getting along just fine when the door burst open. In strode her husband, in his hand a copy of the dreaded review, extracts from which he proceeded to read aloud as my entire body turned crimson (though I have to admit – icy chip and all that – I was also thinking what a good anecdote this would make later). As for Fay, a woman who understood revenge, she was enjoying herself mightily. “She’s very hard, isn’t she?” she said to Nick, smiling like a goblin. “She’s very difficult. She probably didn’t like it because it didn’t have any sex in it.” And then: “Look, you’ve embarrassed the poor girl now.” His work done, Nick left the room and we resumed, as if nothing had happened.
Decline and fall
For a sense of perspective in miserable times, I passionately recommend the exhibition of Chris Killip’s beautiful and painfully moving images of northern Britain in the late 1970s and early 80s, now on at the Photographers’ Gallery in Soho. On one wall hang six photographs of the same street in Wallsend, Tyneside, taken between 1975 and 1977. In the first, there are terrace houses and the hulk of a supertanker, Tyne Pride, rises in the shipyard next to them. In the last, the shipyard stands empty and the terrace houses have been razed. DON’T VOTE, someone has painted on a half-demolished wall. PREPARE FOR REVOLUTION. See it if you can (strikes allowing).
An uplifting diet
I’m not a dieter, but if I had been tempted this year, my recent trip to the cinema to see Corsage, in which Vicky Krieps stars as Elisabeth of Austria, would surely have put me off. Poor Sisi never permitted herself to enjoy Vienna’s lavish cakes; not for her a fat slice of Sachertorte and a gentle hill of whipped cream. Fixated with the size of her waist, the empress existed on a misery-inducing combination of beef broth, sliced orange and the occasional hardboiled egg.
Other improving new year regimes are, however, available. We’re following the one prescribed by the Observer’s critic, Fiona Maddocks, a plan that requires us merely to listen to one piece of classical music a day – though in truth it’s impossible to limit yourself only to one. The other night, as I made supper, we listened to Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, followed by a piece composed by the Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and finally an aria from Vivaldi’s opera, Giustino, and it was bliss: more nutritious by far than any chocolate cake and calorie-free to boot.
Rachel Cooke is an Observer columnist