I am a teacher of English at a secondary school in Lugo, a small town in the northwest of Spain. But for the purposes of this web page I will just refer to my connection with Fay Weldon´s literature, though from a personal and vital point of view. I was in Cornwall as a Spanish teacher assistant during the school year of 1987-89. It was a great experience and it was also the moment when I was first introduced to Fay Weldon´s novels. Pat, my landlady and friend, had Praxis on her shelves which, of course, I read on what might be described as my initiation ceremony into a club which I didn't know it existed then.
Every year on my visits to England or here in Spain I would buy her new novel because there would invariably be a new one. I must say that purchasing them was not at first an intentional act. I was desperately looking for something decent to read and seeing her name on the cover of a book was a cue to buy it. It was a safe choice. I knew good literature was guaranteed and something else invariably came to me out of it: a feeling of lightness which contributed to make life seem easier, it helped change my perspective of it. Her narrative does it without embellishing life but revelling in it and the feeling is so contagious that you become a better person for reading her books.
Not till I had hardly finished writing my thesis did I find out that I had unknowingly joined an enormous club of faithful female readers who, among other things, found guidance, succour, fun, joie de vivre... in her novels. This year I had the honour of being invited to Fay Weldon´s birthday and having breakfast at a very nice bed and breakfast very close to Fay Weldon´s house, my sister and I started to talk to a couple of nurses. When we told them the reason why we were there the woman was impressed, she had read all her novels. That proves my case: those of us who started reading her literature have become her unconditional readers. As for me, I spent many an hour (and much more than that) working on her books and have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Being imbued with her narrative was a wonderful feeling, a feeling which, thankfully, is yearly renewed.
ABOUT ME
