Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon

"I'm always concerned when people, finding out that I'm a writer, apologize and say, 'I'm not much of a reader actually. I know I ought but I just don't seem able to find the time' and then go on to tell me how they feel obliged to finish any book they begin. Well, of course, I say, you will be reluctant to open one in the first place, knowing what it might entail. It isn't meant to be like that, I assure them. If you begin a book and you don't like it, just throw it away....you must be prepared to discard...you have my permission, even my encouragement"

I hope you realized that's a quote and not me talking, but oh my word, there is nothing like Fay Weldon to cheer the most dismal of August days in Devon. I heard Fay Weldon interviewed at Dartington back in 2006 and I've never forgotten what she said when asked about her feminist writing back in the 1960s ' I meant what I said...at the time.'
So as the rain lashed down on our Somme-like garden, the wind howled and the weather vane clanked and squealed around on the roof (there it is in more clement times) reminding us that it had done that day and night all last winter, and yet again we'd forgotten to send the agile Kayaker up there with the WD40 while he was home, I spared a little thought for all those happy campers out there and settled down to to read Fay Weldon's latest novel Chalcot Crescent.
What would we do without Fay Weldon?
How would we cope?
Who'd observe it all and cast that just but wildly imaginative and satiric eye over English proceedings quite so efficiently and stop us all taking ourselves and life too seriously ...just for a little while, surely that's essential and allowed, pop a few little controversies out there to be mulled over while they're at it.
I'm hoping that was also the intention of the book because there was a chuckle a page as I read, as Fay Weldon inhabits the life of Frances, 'her never-born younger sister', a deliciously and highly unreliable narrator essentially living Fay's real life. We could almost be back in the land of J.M.Coetzee  for the convolutions of narrative identity but for the fact you'll laugh out loud a whole lot more at Chalcot Crescent than you might over Summertime.
Chalcot Crescent fondly termed a posh ghetto these days and home to the blingerati, cheferati and rockstarati and doubtless a few MPs for good measure, average house price 2.25 million, but glitterati be very afraid for it may not always be thus, just imagine...
The year is 2013 and Frances, (Fay Weldon's real name incidentally is Franklin) now 81, is living on the dregs of her reputation as a copy-writer, novelist and one-time national treasure and in fear of the debt-collectors who are perpetually hammering at the antique door-knocker of her crumbling Primrose Hill home. Reflecting on five decades of history, with each having chosen its own anxiety, offers Frances plenty of past to chew over, how about calling the child in for tea in the 1960s

'Venetia, come in, your avocado is ready.'

But Frances also copes with the present, the NUG (National Unity Government) is in power with its exhortations to the people to Hug the NUG , CiviSecure maintain law and order in their ominous brown shirts, National Meat Loaf is the staple of the dinner table and rumoured to consist of the reconstituted elderly who have become far too much of a nuisance to be of any further use beyond a fritter.
Opening Margaret Atwood's futuristic and dystopian The Year of the Flood next has been a real revelation because there are moments that chime in each book and I have been completely taken with this unwitting foray into the genre that Margaret Atwood prefers to call 'speculative fiction'.
Two writers with abundant and expansive imaginations at work.
Fay Weldon for her part has decided that fat is the new thin,

' the fatter you are the warmer you can keep'

and dairy herds are back in fashion

'...forget dangerous methane-emitting ruminants - we're hungry and if we don't eat, and we don't have jobs, we riot and burn things down and frighten politicians so much they up and go away.'

Life had really never been the same since the 2009 Crunch and the subsequent collapse in the art market,

'When the Crunch hit in 2009, people stopped buying paintings and decided they could as well tear pictures out of old Sunday supplements and bung those up on their walls.'

'the middle-class tax riots of 2011,'

'the Thames Barrier had failed in 2012 and the flooded area had more or less been abandoned

But keeping her extended and fairly extensive family in her sights is also a tall order with a motley crew of ex's, offspring of 50% unknown origins and their own choices in partners too...and their ex's and their offspring of 50% unknown origins. Plots, conspiracies and subterfuge are rife all conducted under the ailing CCTV system and Fay Weldon builds her dystopian malfunctioning society around it all and through Frances's highly dubious vision.
It might all be far-fetched and occasionally hilarious but who can know?
The exploration of the repeating cycles of history were enough to make me stop and think; the age of excess, the collapse, the age of austerity signaling in the repressive regime of a New Republic and then

'some equivalent of Charles II will bring back Nell Gwynn and oranges, the dancing girls and the maypoles and we will all be sexy and happy again. Till the banks collapse or whatever form it takes, and the cycle continues in sackcloth and ashes.'

It seems a cliche to say this is vintage Weldon, but it is. It's that gloriously unabashed, exuberant style that I associate with her; unrestrained, if Fay Weldon wants to say it she will and to hell if it shocks, there's always wisdom but none of it ever flies in your face and slaps you, it's just there to take or leave and I enjoyed every minute.
Final word to that national treasure Frances...or is it Fay?

'I have always used fiction to get to the heart of the matter, to discover what it is I know. It is up to the facility analysts, when they finally get around to reading this text, to decide what is memoir, what is fact, what is truth (Pilate-like I wash my hands) or some embroidery of the truth.'