A story of gender-change, class-change, chaos and confusion and a novel of humour, wit and distinction. 'Mantrapped' is also the continuing story of Fay Weldon: a woman who has struggled with money, marriage, housing and bringing up babies. Part novel, part memoir and part history of a culture.
Trish 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. 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.
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. The old myths might be right. You can lose your soul all too easily. 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) 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.
She argues in this vastly entertaining book that in a world in which the writer can no longer hope to be anonymous, it is devious, and indeed dishonourable, to keep yourself out of your own novels. The reader, hoping for bread, should not be given stones.
